I have been contributing some of my writing to a project called the Carbon Almanac which was conceived by Seth Godin. Gave me an opportunity to quiz him on things.
He has written a total of 21 books. Last week, I asked him if any of his books had failed and he told me one of his books had succeeded only in Germany! Boo-fucking-hoo.
Got me thinking about how successful he has been. All he does is write about marketing and how to leverage marketing. Although, he has published a few rants on ‘how broken education is’; most of his work is in the area of marketing.
Marketing is about spreading ideas. He has been able to spread ideas using his books.
How many great marketing thinkers do we know who do not speak English?
How many thinkers, who do not know English, would have great ideas?
How much voice would a Brazilian Seth Godin, who knew only Portuguese, have had?
I do not know any great German or French marketing thinker. But at the same time, only Louis Vuitton can sell $50 bags made in Bangladesh for $50,000. Only SAP can sell enterprises atrocious software for the price at which it does. It is so bad that it takes months to implement.
There seems to be a reason that most of the marketing thought seems to emerge from the USA.
English.
If only the South Americans had allowed the ‘right’ people to loot them. They would have been so much more prosperous.
What if Seth had been German? Would he be as successful?
Also, what is the marketing sauce that Louis Vuitton uses? What marketing dark arts are we missing out on? Would we ever find out; locked up in our Anglophilic world?
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