I'd like to say for the record that I'm still on the fence about the way he rights this stuff. It sort of reminds me of that book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Now, mind out, I ended up really enjoying that book, but the tone seemed self-helpish. Tribes, seems the same but with a whiff of sales-pitchiness (my neologasmic creations have no bounds).
That being said, I generally agree with where he is going so far.
One of his headings is 'It's Good to Be King". He loosely ties that to the corporations of today (though I would argue, as he does, that the models are rapidly changing) are centered around head figures where geography is important and power trickles downward to key chosen people who will also hold their share of power. His point, a good one, is that marketing has changed everything. I would argue that it is the TYPE of marketing that has changed everything but he may not have gotten to that yet, or he implies it.
Marketing is still marketing, and has always been powerful in motivating action in both economies and culture, but today it synonymous with the content and information that we use, peruse and work with. Generally. He hints that the way the leader can achieve personal success in his/her passions is to use tools that either are or like marketing...though it isn't marketing because it is an "authentic passion". This made me, sadly, think of Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift (oh, alright, her music isn't too bad). These are two people that didn't join the status quo of performing for years for free, sending out samples, and generally scraping before making it in the music biz. They had a passion for singing and used social media to create a buzz and popularity about what they were doing. They both amassed so many fans that their marketing, as it were, forced the record labels to sign them for HUGE sums of money. Justin Beiber's net worth is reported to be about 130 million. Talk about becoming a leader.
"Stability is an Illusion"
Seriously. He talks about the misguided belief of people that stability is a truth. He mentions that we all think Google will still be number one in five years (though seven years on from when it wrote it, it still is) that we will all fly in airplanes, type on keyboards and that China will keep growing. That reminds me of when my dad was doing his MBA and post work, the world was predicting that Japan would flat out dominate the rest of the world economically. My dad wrote and argued against this but as strong as global cooling was, the truth only came out in time. Godin's point, though dead on, about the instability of marketing and popularity, whether it be brand, site, or even ideas, doesn't go far enough (so far). Look at Justin Bieber again. He recently has had the worst time because he fell from grace by not realizing that the tools that had been used to prop him up were just as easily used to observe his growing from a teenager to a young adult (what a disaster that has been). Most recently, his testimony in some case or another saw him stating that Youtube made him. He also stated that he was very detrimental to his career. We are all sure he meant instrumental but-- oops. That just went out to millions who then tweeted it, retweeted, filmed and created memes and was further spread through reporters, professional bloggers, and persona smaller Tribe leader. The instability of the old world is matched, if not increased, today.