Perception is a powerful thing...play along with it

books:


	• All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World Seth Godin Portfolio Hardcover, 2005 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 92 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Another good one by Seth Godin

The title is a little bit deceptive, it seems bitter and cynical at first. It's actually good sales advice. The basic premise is that people can better relate to a story than marketing hype. So, if you can describe the benefits of your offering in the way of an anecdote, personal experience or third party reference, then you will be able to enable your prospective clients to mentally 'try on' or visualize what you are trying to sell. Seth is a prolific writer who has great vision and foresight, he has been quoted in many other books and generously quotes other authors and great writings as well.

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I dig this book

Great insight on consumer world views. Godin discusses how marketers can leverage those views to better align their intended audience with their product/service. He focuses on the psychosocial aspect of buying without being overly scientific. He gives good examples to support his points throughout the book - those that have succeeded and those that have not.

This is the second book I've read by Godin. He does a good job keeping a consistent theme and appropriate cross referencing between the two books (there are many others). Coming from a background other than marketing, I feel like these books are helping me (my business) grow as opposed to filling me with trivial information. It's more than just "closing the deal", or "getting the sale" type stuff. His theme is more in tune with developing a mindset based on successful product development and getting those products in the hands of the right people (sneezers, as he calls them). I will continue reading his material.

I do have one question. What are the opaque letters on Godin's head on the cover of this book?

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fun marketing

Such fun to read and all about story. This is a great read if you are marketing any product.

Perception is a powerful thing...play along with it

'All Marketers are Liars' is a provocatively entertaining book about marketing and human nature. Seth Godin has once again applied his reliable formula for publishing success:

1. Pick a traditional and well accepted marketing concept
2. Write about it from a totally new perspective
3. Make the book easy to read and include a lot of examples
4. Give the book an intriguing title
5. Sell a lot of books

In 'Purple Cow' the basic concept was differentiation (nothing new in itself, after all, people had been talking about positioning and unique selling propositions for decades). In 'All Marketers are Liars' Seth's premise is based on these two well established marketing concepts:

a) It is harder to make something and then try to sell it, than it is to first find out what people want and then give it to them.
b) It is very difficult (and expensive) to try to change people's perception once it is already formed.

The new 'angle' being explored, though, is that most of the time those perceptions are based on emotions that go against objective facts. The recipe for successful marketing, says Godin, is to find a large enough group of people with a particular world view, and offer them a product that caters and reinforces that world view.

Judging by some reader reviews, some people seem to have taken offense to Seth's thesis, implying that it encourages dishonesty in marketing. I don't subscribe to that point of view. Giving people exactly what they want, even though objective facts suggest that they should want something else is not being dishonest.

To illustrate Seth's thesis I'll give you an example: suppose that you have two identical watches, one of them is made in Switzerland and the other one is made in China. If you ask people which one is better, I bet that nine out of ten will answer `the Swiss watch'.

The objective of the Swiss watch maker is to sell watches. Are they supposed to go around telling everybody that the Chinese watch is as good as theirs? Of course not. The Swiss watch maker's advertising will most likely make extensive use of marketing signals that reinforce the world view of the nine people who picked the Swiss watch: their magazine ads will probably display pictures of their watch with a backdrop of a quaint Swiss village surrounded by the Alps and the Swiss cross prominently displayed somewhere on the page.

Now, if the Swiss watch maker decided to relocate their manufacturing plant to China and continued to use the same marketing signals in their advertising their customers would cry foul. If they also intentionally and openly lied about the country of origin of the watch they would be committing fraud. Seth Godin voices a strong opinion against these two scenarios, the first one because it would be "unauthentic" and the second one because it would be outright illegal and unethical.

'All Marketers are Liars' is a quick and entertaining read (you can probably breeze through it from cover to cover on your average plane ride) and it will leave you with a valuable takeaway on which to base your marketing strategy.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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