What you think you know about the Icarus story; chances are you’ve had it all wrong, Seth Godin tells us. An internationally renowned marketer, author, entrepreneur and speaker, as well as prolific blogger, Seth Godin visited Finland at the ICE Live event in Tampere on January. Godin provided a dose of inspiration, encouraging everyone to make art and let their ideas forth in the world. Moreover, he had his own take on the famous Greek myth.

More is a four-letter word (in marketing)

“We are now facing a revolution”, Godin exclaimed as one of his opening words for his presentation in Tampere. By this, he referred to the change in marketing. In a post-industrialized world, money isn’t made by targeting the masses anymore. Rather, you should embrace the freaks, the outliers who don’t fit the normal distribution: “We get weirder because we get more assured on our weirdness. Normal distribution doesn’t work anymore.” The Internet allows us to access information about very specific areas of interest. Subsequently, people who share those specific interests are easily able to congregate online. Like-minded people are able to connect, much like tribes, and it is in the connection where value is found: “The connection economy is the new revolution”.

Value is in the connection

The more there are connections made, the greater is the value. Here, Godin refers to Metcalf’s law and shares an illustrative example: Owning a fax machine is rendered useless if there is no one else who has one. The more there are fax machines, in turn, the more use you have for your own. Thus, Godin emphasizes the power of cooperation. When we are connecting one person to another, we are also connecting one idea to another: “No single person can manufacture a computer mouse.” There is now a shift from industrial scarcity (keeping to yourself), to the connection economy and sharing (togetherness, seeds of ideas). Ideas flourish when they are shared.

Sing in the rain and fly high

Seth Godin encourages everyone to let forth their idea and not to hold back: “The Internet offers you to be risky in the small”. Failure is often part of the journey. Vulnerability in making art is what makes it special to begin with. Godin brings out another fitting example to make his point. The movie “Singing in the Rain” includes a famous scene where Gene Kelly dances and sings the titular song on a sidewalk, in the middle of the rain. Kelly has an umbrella in his hand but he isn’t really using it: “The whole point is the rain!” Godin highlights.

So what is the point of the Icarus story, you might ask, and why was it even brought up? Firstly, Seth Godin’s latest book is called the Icarus Deception and most of the topics he discussed in Tampere can be found in the book. Secondly, the moral of the story isn’t that cut-and-dry: You might remember Icarus’ father warning Icarus not to fly too high and too close to the sun with his newly-constructed wings, as the sun might burn them. However, the lesser-known part is that the father also warns him not to fly too low, as the sea’s dampness would also destroy his wings. It is equally - if not even more - dangerous to fly too low. So the question is: How high will you fly?

Read Seth Godin's blog here.

Watch ICE Live's video interview here.