Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.8
EAN: 9781591841005
ISBN: 1591841003
Label: Portfolio Hardcover
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: Portfolio Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2005-05-19
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Release Date: 2005-05-23
Studio: Portfolio Hardcover

Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better-and look cooler-than $20 no-names . . . and believing it makes it true.

Successful marketers don't talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe.

This is a book about doing what consumers demand-painting vivid pictures that they choose to believe. Every organization-from nonprofits to car companies, from political campaigns to wineglass blowers-must understand that the rules have changed (again). In an economy where the richest have an infinite number of choices (and no time to make them), every organization is a marketer and all marketing is about telling stories.

Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner or the iPod.

But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That's a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers and Marlboro.

This is a powerful book for anyone who wants to create things people truly want as opposed to commodities that people merely need.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Not Liars...Storytellers
Comment: Seth Godin, author of such classics as Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and Unleashing the Idea Virus (and founder of the social networking site Squidoo), continues to display his chops as one of the freshest and most visionary marketing minds in the English-speaking part of the planet.

In this book, he looks deeply at the power of story in marketing-with some insights I haven't seen elsewhere.

Why does wine actually taste better in a $20 glass than in a $1 glass? The wine is no different-but the story makes it feel different-and people buy the story (and the glass).

The trick, says Godin, is to tell a new story, often to a new audience. Look for a market segment that feels ignored, that its worldview isn't being heard-and tell a story that reaches them. Don't try to bang your head against the wall telling a modified familiar story to the same old familiar audience that's already been buying from someone else. While your story should not contradict facts, the facts are much less relevant to the marketing than the narrative you weave around it.

Specific examples?

The rock band Wilco rejected the classic record-industry story that illegal music downloads are a destructive force. The band released its repertoire for free download and watched CD and concert ticket sales shoot through the roof.

Cereal maker General Mills responded to the Atkins low-carb diet craze of several years ago with a rapid switch to 100% whole grain for all its cereals-and was able to tell a story about health in a world where healthy foods had become relevant. Godin doesn't mention this, but from a marketing/public perception point of view, that switch was relatively easy even for a giant conglomerate, because several of its most popular product lines (Cheerios, Wheaties, Total) had been telling a story about health for decades.

By contrast Interstate Bakeries, whose iconic brands like Wonder Bread and Hostess Twinkies were widely perceived as non-nutritive, was not able to be convincingly healthy in that market and went bankrupt. Which is especially interesting because Wonder has tried to tell a health story for over 50 years, with its "Helps build strong bodies 8 (later changed to 12) ways" tagline-but the product sure didn't feel healthy, despite its added vitamins.

Yet Wonder is still trying to tell a health story to a skeptical world that has discovered in the meantime what real bread looks, tastes, and feels like. This is on the company's website as of June 15, 2008:

Wonder has helped America build strong bodies for over 80 years. It provides essential vitamins and minerals, an important part of your family's healthy diet. And today Wonder is more nutritious than ever before. Every slice is an excellent source of calcium and a good source of folic acid.

Back to Godin, speaking of health:

Marketers have a new kind of responsibility...If you make a fortune but end up killing people and needlessly draining our shared resources, that's neither ethically nor commercially smart, is it? Nuclear weapons have killed a tiny fraction of the number of people that unethical marketing has...I refuse to accept that there's a difference between a factory manager dumping sludge in the Hudson River (poisoning everyone downstream) and a marketing manager making up a story that ends up causing similar side effects.

Among many other examples, he comes down hard on food giant Nestle for telling a story in the 1970s that got mothers in desperately poor nations to switch from breastfeeding to infant formula, under conditions that made failure-and thus, dead babies-inevitable. In his words, there's a difference between a harmless marketing fib that the consumer tells him/herself in order to believe the story, and an outright fraud with harmful consequences, and Nestle was guilty of the latter, until an international boycott made it hurt too much.

On a related note, Godin also points out the importance of making sure the customer experience delivers on the promise of your story. Cold Stone Creamery, the ice cream chain is one of many businesses he faults for breaking the promise:

Scoopers at Cold Stone Creamery occasionally break into song. They'll sing for tips and they'll sing about the joy of ice cream. At my neighborhood Cold Stone, though, they don't sing. They sort of whine a funeral dirge. It's obvious that someone ordered them to sing, and they don't understand why and they certainly don't care...They are in the business of telling a story. And the song and the smiles and the staff are a much bigger part of that than the ice cream...Soon the hordes will stop coming when they find that the experience leaves them hollow.

Final advice from Godin:

* Marketing must take responsibility to be authentic and have integrity (something I talk about at great length in my own book Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First)
* When people shift their pre-existing worldview, they're ready to hear a story that reinforces the change
* Powerful stories can often be found at the junctions of apparent oxymorons like "socially conscious investing," "adventure cruise line" or even "compassionate conservative"

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Authentic Stories and Experiences Help Attract and Retain Customers
Comment: All Marketers Are Liars is one of Seth Godin's better marketing books. If you have a choice between reading Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars, opt for this one.

The book is based on the observation that customers want to align with offerings and services that reinforce their positive self-images. I'm sure that idea isn't new to you. Otherwise, why would someone pay ten times as much for an item of frequently poor quality that has five cents worth of a brand image stitched into its front?

The book builds from these premises:

1. Don't waste your time trying to educate people about what their worldview should be or what your offerings are. Instead just slip into their preconceptions in a comfortable, authentic way.

2. You won't be noticed unless you fit into their worldview and seem to offer something new that they value.

3. An effective, authentic story can help you make a better and more lasting first impression.

4. Most of the future "experience" of your story will be assumed by customers who want to believe that you are what you say you are.

The book takes a little long to make those points. I found myself wishing this were a tightly edited article rather than a meandering book.

Part of Godin's "promise" to his fans is that he will "shake things up." As a result, the title is deliberately misleading to make people pick the book up . . . because ever customer has been lied to my a marketer or sales person. There's nothing new there. His "new" point for those who haven't studied marketing is that customers like a little sizzle with their steak.

If you know about the emotional value of a brand, this book is a waste of your time. If you think that people only care about product and service features, you need this book.

If you really want to learn about storytelling, I suggest you become acquainted with Stephen Denning's fine books on the subject. If you want to develop a sound foundation in marketing, see Phil Kotler's books.

If you want to be entertained without learning too much, stick with Mr. Godin.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The importance of having a story that resonates with customers' world view
Comment: "Marketers are liars" is a catchy title. A more informing title would be "Products need to resonate with customers' (subjective) world view", but it wouldn't have sold as well... Godin is good at marketing to marketers.

A central theme is that consumers are not rational. They lie to themselves about the decisions they make and later rationalize those decisions. It's a good reminder, although this is psychology 101 and clearly not a "whole new way of doing business" as Godin claims.

I am writing this a couple of years after reading it. What I still remember and like from the book, is the reminder that stories should resonate with the world views ALREADY held by your customers. In my field, many people spend far too much time trying to "educate" the market which is a constant uphill battle. The examples in the book made me think of ways to change the offer and message to better tie into the world views of the buyer.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: a good resource for designers
Comment: A design colleague I respect recommended this book as a way to answer some of the questions I had about the ethics about selling design services and business in general. It makes a good case for why certain services are more expensive than others, and how to justify your fees..

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good overall message, weak concept and light on real content
Comment: Let's start with the title of the book, "All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World". Hmmm. Something is already wrong here.

When I look up the word "authentic", I get the definition, "conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief". Doesn't it follow that if we tell "authentic" stories in our marketing we are by definition telling the truth and not lying?

Alas, Godin admits he was lying to us from the start because right on the back dust jacket of the book he states, "I was lying to you when I named this book. Marketers aren't liars. They are just storytellers. It's the consumers who are liars." He then goes on to state that marketers tell stories and because consumers choose to believe those stories that best fit into their own world view that they are, in essence, lying to themselves.

OK, I still have a problem with the whole premise of the book.

Not to be redundant, but if marketers are out there telling authentic stories, why would somebody who believes those stories that "conform to the facts" be lying to themselves? I'll forgive the inconsistency because Mr. Godin is trying to make a larger point, but I won't forgive the use of a bold, deceptive title in an attempt to sell books.

I'll grant that we humans all gravitate to brands that tell stories that are consistent with our own world views, but to take self-selective brand filtering and twist it to give the impression that something is wrong in the marketing profession is just plain usurious.

Godin uses some great supporting case studies in this book about how some very good marketers tell vivid stories about their brands and how those stories self-select their audiences. In my opinion, this is exactly what any good marketer and any powerful brand is supposed to do.

Godin goes one step further, however, and implies that often the story that gets told is the only differentiator between brands and that the story alone can be used to build a great brand.

He misses the point.

If the stories are authentic, then it is the whole brand behind the story that is different. The stories are not lies. The stories are describing why one brand is different and unique from others. The marketing "stories" are indeed brand promises or brand stories and it is our duty to tell our brands' unique stories as compellingly and as convincingly as we can.

Even if we accept for the moment that consumers turn off all logic and purely make emotional decisions based upon which story they choose to believe in the absence of real data (more on this in a few moments), we cannot believe that people will turn off their logic indefinitely so that any significant brand preference built in this way is sustainable over the long-term. Sooner or later the brand is going to have to live up to the story.

While Godin's theories are well presented with good examples, I couldn't help but read the book and feel that it was a good short article or opinion piece that got compromised when it was stretched into a book and given a provocative title.

His assertion that marketers should tell vivid stories that consumers want to believe is indeed solid advice. His underlying, unstated implication that marketers should tell the "right lies", however, does a disservice to the entire marketing profession.

Sure, he purposefully named the book in a misdirecting manner to get a reaction that would spur debate, generate buzz, and sell more books...and here I am responding. OK Seth, one for you.

However, not all buzz is good buzz and not all discussion will help build a strong brand. Not all stories are worth repeating.

In the case of "All Marketers Are Liars", I'd have to say the book did not live up to my expectations of the Seth Godin brand.

I've read Godin's previous works and expected more from this effort. Godin's previous works were much stronger and did not have to resort to tricks or gimmicks to sell the books. Nor did they contain as much filler material as this one seems to have. The problem is, he does not give a single example in the entire book where a marketer is shown to be genuinely lying and consumers are rewarding that brand. Now I find that I must approach any of his future works with some skepticism and ask myself, "Is he just trying to be provocative to sell books or is there real--and enough--meat here?"

Back to suspended logic.

One passage in the book (pages 93-94) reveals that Mr. Godin shops for certain products, in this case organic foods, not because he believes the marketing claims but because he lies to himself about the brands because he believes they make him feel better. This is a fair enough claim and a valid point for marketers and branders to remember. As I stated in my e-book, "How to Build and Maintain A Powerhouse Brand", an important part of building a strong brand is tapping emotion and building more than just product features and benefits into the brand's story. Brands must make logical and emotional appeals.

In this particular passage of the book, Godin explains that he shops for organic foods not because they taste or perform any better (he claims that he believes the data is not clear), not because they are less expensive (he claims that he believes the prices are inflated), not because they are any better for him (he claims that many items found at organic grocery stores are loaded with saturated fats and sugar-loaded juices) and not because they are a good way to support family farmers (he claims that most of the money goes to marketers and processors), but because it is a way for many (we can only assume he includes himself in this category) to assuage guilt about being Americans because Americans are the "world's least efficient consumers of just about everything". (Got that? Because he does not believe certain marketing claims, that must mean the the marketer is lying to him.)

That's when my brain started to twitch.

Mr. Godin puts all logic aside and admits that he makes purchases emotionally and, at least at times, suspends all logic. He is willing to accept the fact that he believes self-lies just to feel less guilty.

Therein is an indication of what the real title of this book should be: "Consumers Are Not Always Rational" or maybe, "I Lie to Myself".

Those would be great potential book titles. The book could be geared toward all the bottom line, ROI, analytical types out there who want all branding decisions to be based on numbers and hard facts. The book could then go on to describe why building emotion into brands is so important and that it cannot be underestimated because humans do not respond to logic alone. Often they make decisions based on emotion and rationalize those decisions later using logic. Sometimes they are just going for a certain feeling--even if their actions are self-proclaimed to be irrational.

You genuinely lying marketers out there, take note. Seth Godin has told us that he believes what he thinks are lies as long as they conform to his world view. Read this book to learn more about his purchasing habits and then set him up in your databases accordingly so you can sell him your wares.

For the rest of you marketers, this book is interesting and useful but not worth the purchase price unless you want more books with titles such as, "All Marketers Are Thieves", "All Marketers Are Sleazy", and "All Marketers Are Pond Scum". If Seth makes a lot of money at it this time I'm sure he'll keep going back to the same well. (If you recall, I covered his comments at the DMA conference back in October when he declared all marketers are spammers. Perhaps he was giving us a preview of his new writing strategy.)

I'll tell you what. Save your money and borrow my copy of the book. Just send it back when you're done reading it.

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