Client Relationships: Farming vs Hunting
I regularly follow Seth Godin’s blog and always find something interesting and insightful in his posts. Today is no exception.
Check out “Farming and Hunting” for a great analogy between how our ancestors progressed from hunter-gatherer to more efficient and sustainable methods of acquiring sustenance, and the challenge businesses face today in finding new customers. Here’s an excerpt:
“Fortunately, we discovered/invented the idea of farming. Plant seeds, fertilize em, water em, watch em grow and then you harvest them.
“The idea spread and it led to the birth of civilization.
“Everyone got the idea… except for marketers.”
TAGS: This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 at 7:39 am and is filed under Business Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 11th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
You should mention to our boy, Seth, that the agricultural revolution occured sometime between 10 and 12 thousand years ago, not 5 thousand. Forgive the nitpickings of a history teacher.
January 11th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Ha! Great catch John.
January 12th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
I used to email Seth every now and then. I always wondered if his quick responses to me were from a staff. Well, at least I tried to get his attention with my blog.
You notice he doesn’t allow comments. To get real attention out of Seth you have to be tracked back.
Fact is I pondered this hunting vs gatherer idea over a year ago.
From Nov 2004
I’m wondering in the present blog-age we find ourselves in…
if information is hunted or gathered? The reason I ask comes about in a roundabout way.
I’ve always been interested in color, color theory, color blindness, how we evolved to see color. I happened upon this blog this morning where I hunted down this posting and dutifully gathered in the information from the linkage. At this point (s–t–r–e–t–c–h) I came to the conclusion that we are now a society that feeds on information. Men and women’s ability or inability to detect hundreds/thousand… of screen colors must have some outcome on the amount of information we can track down and the amount that we gather in.
———————-
Now you may wonder what color has to do with any of this. Color blind hunters are better at picking out prey against a confusing background. Agrarian societies may be poor hunter societies… I wonder if you would note that in their ability to see color.
I know this is spotty and unclear, but think about it. Do your own hunting. Color blind people are at a disadvantage on the web.
Seth is no longer a guru. Seth just recycles ideas from people who really do think. I’ve watched it for awhile now.
January 12th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Thank you for your comments Nancy! I think the points you raise are very interesting and appreciate that you took the time to post them.
I unfortunately don’t know Seth personally, nor do I know him well enough from simply following him online and in print, to intelligently reply to your comments regarding him. However, I can offer that I personally have been plagued with having a slew of fantastic billion-dollar ideas that I shortly thereafter find out have already been thought of and capitalized on. If you take the glass is half empty view, we can surmise that there aren’t any unique ideas anymore. Yet, if you can accept that possibility (which I don’t completely), an alternative is to move on and focus on innovation and execution, which in my mind at least, offer infinite possibilities for variance.
I certainly don’t want to take away from the points you made — just simply trying to offer another way to look at the situation.
January 12th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
I don’t know Seth either. I am just amazed at the followers and Seth is guru fans. Who challenges Seth?
Truthfully, I’m only in the innovation boat with one foot. The other on shore. Just that I’m not sure all this marketing and innovation has brought us together. The people doing the best job marketing and getting me in their stores and to their sites are not making me happy for a sustainable high.
Why just last night I wandered the aisles of a super store laughing and shaking my head, noting the beauty of everything new. But I didn’t part with any dollar. I went across the street to the used good store and wandered through a museum of things, many less than five years old and thought: what a society that throws away the bones before picking the meat off of them.