Oct 1, 2006

Seth Godin Say Relax

I was reading Seth Godin's Small Is The New Big this week.

The author of several books that were highly influential to ePrize (Unleashing The IdeaVirus, Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, et cetera), Godin was a keynote speaker at the second ePrize "Summit" in Las Vegas, 2006. The whole permission maketing idea -- offering people a chance to win in order to gather handraisers (or opt-ins) is the crux of the ePrize business model.

The irony to this tale is that in Small Is The New Big, Godin write a condemnation of companies with the sweatshop mentality that ePrize exemplifies. In his "rift" titled "Relax," Godin decries companies that value long hours over time for one's family. He extolls the values of working "smarter, not harder" and how shallow those "war time" memories of all-nighters and emergency deadlines are in retrospect.

A buzz term that comes to mind is "managing expectations." There is little of that at ePrize. It's much more of a "promise the moon" mentality that keeps workers practically chained to their desk. The mantra there is, "This is not a nine to five job." At least there's truth in advertising here. When Godin describes those companies where employees jeopardize their health and marriages for the sake of work, he's talking about ePrize.

Let's hope that, like other books read and treated like the gospel by ePrize's upper management, that Seth Godin saying "Relax" might manage to sink in.

No comments: