Unleashing the Idea Virus [PDF].pdf

Godin himself notes that much of the content of his book (and his earlier Permission Marketing) seems obvious. Yet, as he goes on to show convincingly, that which is obvious has rarely been practiced. When you read Godin's thoughts about permission marketing and ideaviruses, they may sound obvious yet almost all marketers continue to throw huge sums of money at old-fashioned interruption marketing. The infamous peak of this was the spurt of expensive Superbowl ads by transient e-tailers.

Like his previous book, Godin's Unleashing the Ideavirus entertains the reader while successfully setting off bursts of ideas along the way. Rather than marketing at the consumer, Godin's approach seeks to maximize the spread of information from customer to customer. The book provides the expected examples of successful ideavirus marketing, then develops a recipe for concocting your own ideaviruses. In order to show how to make your idea infectious, the book examines what makes a powerful 'sneezer', how 'hives' work, and applies the concepts of critical velocity, vector, medium, smoothness, persistence, and amplifiers. As Godin shows, the now-familiar idea of viral marketing is one very specific form of ideavirus marketing. Most businesses will not be able to engage in true viral marketing, but all can use the ideavirus approach.

While you may finish Unleashing the Ideavirus thinking that you really did not learn anything drastically new, it is unlikely that you will feel that you've wasted your time. Godin has once again written an enjoyable book that cleverly packages important ideas that have obvious practical use. Any book like this that causes the reader to continually stop and rapidly jot down ideas to implement is well worth the hour or two it takes to read.