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As a designer, marketer and all-around thinker, I must say that I love Seth Godin. But it is not his trim physique that attracts my attention, it is his head. Particularly the top of his head.

There it is in every photograph, in every video, like a shining beacon of intelligence and humor. I wonder if he has ever had hair, or perhaps he has a full, luxuriant growth that he has to secretly mow everyday or it would destroy his image.

Seth Godin has made a brand out of baldness.

For this image to work as an icon he has to be totally, unabashedly, and completely bald. Not a glimmer or hint of living follicles can grace the top of his cranium, or he would lose his brand. He has to be proud of being bald, no hiding it by combing long hair over this pate. No, he has to put it out in full view as the remarkably immaculate image he so carefully maintains.

His head resembles a light-bulb.

I am sure he knew — being an idea-man — that the best way to show that he is a genius was to have his head look like that icon of idea-generation: a light-bulb. When a man is truly bald, he cannot help being noticed. Why not use baldness as a way to take over the (marketing) world?

godin-3The whole thing is probably a plot by Seth to gain ascendancy as the marketing genius of the modern age. He might have used Yul Brenner as a model for his nefarious marketing plan. Good ol’ Yul wasn’t “remarkable” until he shaved his head. Shaving his head made Yul an icon in the movie world, and it made him somehow irresistible to female fans, but it didn’t convey the idea that he was the Mensa of Marketing.

How did Seth ever hit on the brilliant idea of turning what most men might think of as a liability into a memorable brand? I like to imagine a thought bubble emanating from his celebrated cerebellum:

“Now, what can I do to make my image remarkable?” “How can I convey that I am a marketing genius just by using my head?”

The solution is now history.

Copyright 2009 Aliyah Marr