Great interview with Seth Godin over at Blog d'Kawasaki. Done in support of his new book, which is apparently a greatest hits reprint of blog and other columns, both the questions and answers are worthy of your time.

My favorite of the 10 questions, has Seth relating his theme of storytelling to the Cluetrain idea of conversations:

Question: What is an example of company that created a brand by conducting a dialogue with customers?

Answer: You don’t know many either, do you Guy? Ahh, we agree! I think that while markets are conversations, marketing is a story. Starbucks creates conversations among customers, so does Apple. The NYSE makes a fortune permitting people to interact with each other. But great marketing is storytelling, and if you’ve been to a Broadway show lately, you’ll notice that audience participation is discouraged. That doesn’t mean that great playwrights don’t listen! They do. They, like great marketers, listen relentlessly. They engage in offline conversations constantly. They poll and they do censuses and most important, they have true conversations with small groups of real people. But THEN, they tell a story.