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 Reviews
All Marketeers are Liers:
This was a gift but the person who received it said it was just what he wanted.
Repetitive.Poorly organized. Fluffy.:
This book would have made a nice HBR article, if condensed into 15 pages. Alas, I had to force myself keep reading after the first chapter (which I read in the bookstore, and which made me buy the book in the first place)As many others have noted, the book is overly repetitive, poorly organized and generally has too much fluff in it, portraying a simple concept as a sacred marketing elixir… 4 points for the first chapter, minus 2 points for the rest of the book.
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.
fun marketing:
Such fun to read and all about story. This is a great read if you are marketing any product.
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?
