Godin Vs Kerin
The two assigned readings for one my master’s courses in Digital Media and Marketing are Kerin’s book about marketing and Seth Godin’s book. I believe we were given these two books to read, since they both show a very different aspect and way of thinking about marketing. Giving us two extremely different views and ways of thinking allow us as students to gain insights from two extremely well renowned marketers, both of whom disagree in their strategy but yet are both top of their fields and highly successful, this I believe allows us to not see marketing as a set of rules, but more of an ever evolving and changing science that we can continue to learn. So basically a science with many theories and an ever continuing experiment.
From the chapters that I have read Godin’s approach seems to be a lot more trial and error, whereas Kerin has more of a science to follow, which is a lot more rigid. One anecdote from Godin that really stood out is when he went to observe the glasses being sold in a small village in India. Godin saw an opportunity to change and adapt in that moment, it would probably go against most marketing experts advice.
Part of Godin’s philosophy is to find your smallest viable audience, the people who really care about your product/service. He doesn’t want you to think big when it comes to target audience, he’s looking for a very specific and targeted market that relies on you to supply them. In short, find what that small group of consumers want and give it to them. Whereas Kerin seems to not care about catering to such a small audience, he is looking at a larger picture.
Kerin goes a lot more into the theory and the science behind consumers and why they buy the products that they do, he shows this by going into detail about the 5 stages of buying a product. This differs to how I perceive Godin, Godin doesn’t give over the science and although a lot of his ideas follow the same methodology, he doesn’t see it as a marketer's job to look at a consumer that way, he wants you to understand why the consumers thinks or believes they need you product.
So far, I think I would tend to agree with Godin and having already read his book previously I might have a slight bias, however, I do see and understand Kerin’s methodology and there are evident overlaps between the two. Maybe once I’m further along in Kerin’s book I will relate more to his structured and scientific approach of marketing. Only time will tell!
As always, looking forward to hearing any feedback from any readers.
Best,
Zak
