March 17, 2005
all marketers are liars
Seth Godin, my favorite marketing writer kindly sent me an advance copy of his new book, All Marketers Are Liars. Just finished reading it.
Well, what can I say? If you like his blog, then you’ll like this book.
The thing I like about Seth’s writing is his ability to make things appear so obvious that you end up believeing you knew it already.
There’s one sentence on Page One:
“Either you’re going to tell stories that spread, or you’ll become irrelevant.”
That single line, in my opinion, is worth the price of the book.
But hey, I just told you the line, so now you can save yourself twenty bucks, right? Wrong. You need to read the whole thing to understand exactly what he’s talking about. For it to really sink in.
The point of the book is not that all marketers are all liars, but that they’re storytellers. Their job is to make up stories good enough to where the buyers no longer care that they’re complicit in believing them– i.e. we believe the lie. We know Apple won’t turn us into rock stars, we know Harley Davidson isn’t going to free us from our dreary jobs. But we like the story anyway. We believe the lie, and it’s the story that gives us permission to do so.
The thing about Seth that some people find quite intimidating is that he offers the reader nowhere to hide. He doesn’t write books about “How to sell your crap-ass product for more money.” He challenges you. Everything he writes invariably asks the question, “Why waste your time selling crap-ass products?”
Why waste your time trying to sell something you can’t tell a good story about?
Hey — aren’t YOU lucky to get an advanced copy of Seth’s book!
I too am a big fan of his — bought ‘purple cow’ and ‘free prize inside’ in the box — and about 8 months ago used a few of his techniques to create a humorous mini-internet virus that earned more hits to a website in 45 days than it’d received since its inception four and half years earlier.
One of the most entertaining aspects of that webpage was an element of story telling, so I’m eager to read this book and see how he expands on that theme.
Thanks for the heads up and your (I assume) two thumbs up review!
Calling bloggers liars is not a good move
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