10 Best TED Talks of All Time about Marketing

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, has provided viewers a window into some of the industry’s brightest minds. The hundreds of talks featured on their site (which can be downloaded for free, mind you) offer more than enough ideas for you to discuss and mull over with your co-workers and associates.

As marketers and small business owners, below are the best TED talks about marketing and business to inspire you with new information, as well as challenge your way of thinking and come up with better solutions to your marketing approach.

Seth Godin: How to get your ideas to spread
Duration: 17:05 minutes

In the century of idea diffusion, the talk discusses the different ways in which certain ideas for your business are disseminated, from the mundane to the ridiculously expensive. The talk then ultimately asks the question about your idea: is it remarkable?

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
Duration: 16:39 minutes

This riveting and hilarious talk tackles the problem of perception and how it pretty much shapes our view of things. Considering that all ideas are relative, what they need to be successful is the appropriate context for how people should see them.

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Derek Sivers: How to start a movement
Duration: 3:10 minutes

A quick but highly effective talk that features a viral video of a half-naked man dancing during the Sasquatch Music Festival in 2009 and why the crowd danced with him. Best advice on the video: have the courage to follow.

Joseph Pine: What consumers want
Duration: 14:23 minutes

This thought-provoking talk deals with how authenticity is rendered to each experience. For businesses to provide an authentic experience to their respective customers, they must be true themselves and what they say about themselves to people.

John Gerzema: The post-crisis consumer
Duration: 16:35 minutes

The US economic crisis that started in 2008, referred to as “The Great Unwind” by Gerzema, has shaped the purchasing habits of people from anxiety to action. This video details points of interest on how consumers have adjusted their budget to  accommodate their lifestyle, which you can use in coming up with a marketing campaign for your business.

Renny Gleeson: 404, the story of a page not found
Duration: 4:08 minutes

Although a regular 404 page on your site gives off a  feeling of a broken relationship with a user, you can leverage this to your advantage by including a compelling content and design to not only build your brand, but also reconnect with your seemingly lost audience. The idea in this video is that every setback comes with great opportunity, and it is up to you whether or not to take advantage of it.

Dan Cobley: What physics taught me about marketing
Duration: 07:39 minutes

What does Newton’s Law, Heisenberg Principle, and thermodynamics have in common with marketing? Cobley, passionate in both fields, connects the dots for viewers of this talk in layman’s terms. The pragmatic application of scientific concepts in physics to developing a brand or business shows how marketing can be related to your fields of interest, thereby allowing you to have a much more profound and personal connection with marketing.

Amy Lockwood: Selling condoms in the Congo
Duration: 4:17 minutes

Having lived in the Congo and worked closely with HIV-positive children and adults, “reformed marketer” Lockwood discusses the difference between the condoms in this region in Central Africa and the ones sold in the US. In this talk, how a product or service is marketed is dependent on what the consumer demands.

Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier
Duration: 16:05 minutes

With the many decisions consumers have to make for a particular product or service, they are presented with a choice overload problem. The belief that the more choices will lead to more avenues for sale is deeply flawed – studies presented in this talk reveals that customers are less engaged when presented with a multitude of choices and presents solutions to the problem.

Seth Godin: The tribes we lead
Duration: 17:27 minutes

Saturating the market with advertisements of your mundane idea will only produce noise. In order to build better branding and increase profits for your business, you must first come up with a mind-blowing idea. While this kind of idea isn’t wholly embraced by the market, this is where “tribes” come into play. These are groups looking for great ideas outside the norm that have the potential to “blow up.”

Additional Resources:

• Top 5 TED Talks for Inbound Marketers
• Top 10 TED Talks Every Market Researcher Should See
• 5 Top TED Talks about Social Media & Digital Media

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