Seth on the church and design

seth godinLooks like Seth is jumping into the church arena a bit…good to see him here.

Tony did a Q&A with him as part of the promo for Catalyst and to talk about Seth’s “new” Triibes.com. I put “new” in quotation marks because quite honestly, I’m a bit surprised at the lack of ingenuity from Seth on this one. He started with genius…create a barrier to entry causing everyone that should be there to want to be there. But…then he used a boxed solution (ning.com) for the platform so when I log in I see what I see on every other site. Eh. Hopefully he will surprise me…so far, other than the fact that he’s narrowed down who’s involved which is nice, I’m not overly excited.

Then wander on over to Seth’s blog for a great post about n00bs….but the n00bs part isn’t what caught my attention this did:

Great design is intuitive. Great design eliminates confusion. But not for everyone, not all the time. The words and interactions you use often have a sophistication that will confuse some portion of your audience.

It supports my ranting about design being about more than the prettiness (yep that’s a real word), it’s about communication. In fact I am no longer calling what we do church marketing…Holy Cow Creative is a strategic church communications + design studio. We will always take it in that order 1. Communications 2. Design.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 1:16 pm and is filed under church marketing . 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.

  • @Von Alright...another big hitter on the blog! Thanks for taking part in the conversation.

    That's poetic...and deep. Marketing and design must go hand in hand, the best results are seen when they work in harmony. It's like a symphony, if they both play in harmony, bring their unique sounds together instead of playing on their own....the music will move you.

    @danielle Keep at it!
  • Wow...a Seth Godin reply on my blog...quite an honor. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

    It was genius how you got everyone there, and that alone may be why I was let down. I was expecting to login and see more genius, but instead I saw an off the shelf solution. My expectations where high, I expected to experience something remarkable.

    I obviously haven't read your book yet, so I don't know a lot about your philosophy but I was hoping to see something more...tribal.

    Here are a few ideas

    <ul>
    <li>As part of the signup have people setup their "tribe"...which people can then join once they have achieved the entrance "fee" for that tribe determined by the tribes chief.</li>
    <li>Allow tribes to connect to each other to show affiliation and show those connections.</li>
    <li>Add war paint...give the ability to create custom icons, logos, etc. that people use as their triiibal icon for their blogs, sites, etc.</li>
    </ul>

    Don't just create another social network...take the concept all the way to the edge and then push it (your words). Sure you can create groups...but this is a tribe not a group. I can create a group anywhere, I want something different. Wow me.

    You might also be interested in Brad Abare's thoughts on tribalism vs. cause.
  • Marketing without design is lifeless, and design without marketing is mute.

    The one absolute when it comes to the balance of good design and marketing is thier is no absolute guarantee of success regardless of how well the design or communication is handled.

    Having both facilitates an opportunity for success far better than not having either or just one, but I've seen too many well executed projects fail when everything was done well.

    More times than not however I see marketing folk blame design when something fails and that shows me a flaw in the perception of many marketing peoples understanding of the bigger picture.
  • What were you hoping for?

    I'm not pretending to build a great platform for social networking, just to provide a space for interesting conversation to take place about tribes and leadership.

    If you've got ideas, would love to hear them.
  • THANK YOU! I am all about the "communications" word. It perfectly describes what I do.
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