All Marketers Are Liars

Found it in a bookstore, controversial title but he knows his stuff. It got me: I ended up reading it just because of the title.

In short, it’s another of Godin’s short books on marketing, with some fairly obvious strategies explained well.

Notes

• Tell customers a story they want to hear. It should be genuine (it doesn’t have to match reality exactly, just avoid fraud) and it has to hook them.
• The story has to be credible. Example of expensive glasses: even if the taste is the same, people pay a lot because there’s a credible story behind them. Customers don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want.
• Everyone has their own worldview, and you can’t please them all. Instead, identify a niche, even if it doesn’t exist yet, and group together people with a similar worldview. Once you’ve found them, give them their story. Example: Baby Einstein targeted moms by telling them it would make their kids smarter.
• Tailor to the worldview. Once you’ve identified it, adapt, especially when the worldview shifts (example: a factory making super-caloric sweets). It should have launched a healthy line which, even if it wasn’t truly healthy, signaled the idea and told the story by being slightly healthier than before.
• Understand how the brain processes information. People are so bombarded that ads barely work anymore. You need to be genuine, tell your story, and bring something extreme and divisive. It’s fine if you lose some people; your goal is a niche. The human brain notices what’s new.
• Authentic stories impress, but you don’t control how or when, and you can’t predict it ahead of time. It helps to have a great product, a strong message, a compelling story, and a solid team to promote it well.
• Don’t commit fraud. The market doesn’t forgive lies. Align everything you do with the story you’ve chosen, and don’t be indecisive.