ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008No, this isn’t a rant about ethics. The provocative title is that of a fascinating book by Seth Godin that offers a different approach to success in marketing. Simply stated, Godin thinks that the best marketing tells the right story about a product or service to fit the consumer’s view of life. You’re not being untruthful, just very subjective about how you position yourself. He calls this kind of storytelling “lying,” but he smiles when he says it.
In a companion piece to the 2005 serialization of the book in Fortune Small Business Magazine, Godin says the best marketers use compelling stories that are authentic and original:
Marketers (and all human beings) are well trained to follow the leader. The natural instinct is to figure out what’s working for the competition and then try to outdo it–to be cheaper than your competitor who competes on price, or faster than the competitor who competes on speed. The problem is that once a consumer has bought someone else’s story and believes that lie, persuading the consumer to switch is the same as persuading him to admit he was wrong. And people hate admitting that they’re wrong.
Instead, you must tell a different story and persuade listeners that your story is more important than the story they currently believe. If your competition is faster, you must be cheaper. If they sell the story of health, you must sell the story of convenience. Not just the positioning x/y axis sort of “We are cheaper” claim, but a real story that is completely different from the story that’s already being told.
When it comes to your marketing, are you simply following the lead of others in your field? Could you create a unique story about why customers or clients need and want your product or service? Marketing like this can help you stand out from the competition — and that’s no lie.