ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS

I am of course referring to the Godin book and not casting aspersions on my fellow marketers. I am guessing that if Seth Godin had entitled the book ‘All Marketers tell the truth’ then the eye-catching title may have lost some of its impact and you wouldn’t be reading this. 

So what’s the lie? The lie is what we ALL tell ourselves because we don’t tell ourselves the WHOLE truth – we tell ourselves a selected version of the facts or truth [the story as Godin puts it] to make sense of complex matters in a world of overwhelming data overload. So the lie is not from the marketer, it’s the consumer’s lie to themselves. 

This is therefore a book about how to tell stories that spread; hinged to the idea that people pass on stories, they don’t spread all the facts for the simple reason that those we tell them to don’t remember everything, it is passed via a selected and packaged version of the truth. So successful marketers are just the providers of stories that consumers choose to believe. 

At its core then this book to me is about two of marketing’s core elements; the process of segmentation, targeting and positioning [STP] and the principle of translating features to benefits. Godin describes his book as being about the ‘psychology of satisfaction,’ satisfaction being the main driver behind Godin’s ‘ideavirus.’ He talks of how marketers should frame their story according to the worldview of those that you are telling it to. 

You’ll be able to identify evidence of the early stages of ideas that Godin further develops in his next book Meatball Sundae [see earlier blog] which is also worthy of a read. One of those being the changing shape or role of the marketer [in the internet age] and the increased responsibility the marketing industry has in a branded and more competitive world. Godin’s book is actually more about TELLING and LIVING the truth, and he isn’t suggesting we all start telling lies.

 

Comments

[Business Intelligence Solution]

Good information about the marketer. Yes All the marketer are liers. First up all they make us confident on their network marketing. After that they say the truth of network marketing. After all We realized that I should not be member of these network marketing company.