Are marketers liars, or storytellers?
In working through my long list of books to read I am always happy to take a Seth Godin detour, and this one from 2005 holds up surprisingly well- and is disturbingly relevant in an age of misinformation and disinformation. Since it’s surely been reviewed many times over since the original publishing, I’ll steer clear of commentary or criticism and just respond to a few excerpts that were especially salient for me.
“Either you’re going to tell stories that spread or you will become irrelevant”
This reminds me of another Seth-ism, “ideas that spread, win”. It’s true and unfortunately applies to bad, even dangerous, ideas; and we saw this happen in 2016 and it almost happened in 2020. The power of a story and it’s resonance with the audience matters almost more than the degree of accuracy or truth or good intention behind whatever is being promoted.
“Stories are shortcuts we use because we’re too overwhelmed by data to discover all the details. The stories we tell ourselves are lies that make it far easier to live in a very complicated world.”
“No one buys facts… They buy a story”
Everyone has access to data these days- so I believe the challenge, the imperative for, is making sense of it and utilizing data in the context of a story to substantiate, reinforce, amplify or challenge in order to make change happen.
“A great story is true (not factual but consistent and authentic) it has truth to it.”
Even truth itself is not objective in this model of thinking; in this age where two people can live in practically two different information ecosystems they will for all practical purposes develop different ideas of what truth means- and this means that for storytelling of any kind- political, commercial, religious or otherwise- to resonate with an audience, it has to be mindful of if not informed by that audience’s truth.
“Great stories don’t appeal to logic but they often appeal to our senses.”
I thought this was an interesting claim; while I know types who describe themselves as very evidence-based in their thinking, unswayed by style or aesthetics, solely interested in what they deem to be the objective truth, I believe that in and of itself is a degree of aesthetic preference. I.e., a practical, pragmatic, no-nonsense consumer does not use their senses in absorbing a story; but a story that will move them will no doubt reflect their sensibility and preference for nothing more than the information they seek. That in itself is a mode of storytelling.
“People don’t want to change their worldview. They like it, they embrace it and they want it to be reinforced.”
“Before we are able to share a story with our friends, colleagues or the Internet, we need to tell it to ourselves.”
“It’s easy to believe the lie we tell ourselves.”
“Great stories are trusted.”
As it relates to the the work I do in marketing, positioning and branding, I don’t think he means ‘lie’ in the sense you are concealing or destroying a truth or transmitting something that isn’t true. I think he means that as marketers we are indeed synthesizing a narrative that we convince ourselves of first and then we tell the people we’re trying to serve, and while it may not be true for everyone, it has to reflect some percentage truth for us and especially them- the audience, the customer, the user of the story.
We know that everything requires story telling to make sense and change anyone. Even the most rigorous science, which produces what we eventually call facts, must not only be substantiated with evidence, in order to gain traction and acceptance those ideas need to be informed by and translated through the filters of the persons it is being communicated to.
Scientists make change happen in their field of inquiry by first understanding their audience- other scientists. And they will want a story that contains key ingredients:
- a trustworthy storyteller with the requisite credentials and body of work that allows them to be trusted;
- a demonstrated understanding of the field of study and its latest advances;
- a compelling hypothesis that creates tension and gives the recipient reason to care;
- experimental design that reflects both awareness of best practice and innovative thinking;
- a rigorous research process and diligent peer-reviewed analysis of the findings;
…and all these things must stack up to support a persuasive conclusion. So ‘facts’ such as they are not nearly enough- they are only the beginning.
“Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization.”
I would encourage any marketer, or anyone looking to make a persuasive case for that matter, to give ‘All Marketers Are Liars” a read. Like most of Godin’s books it is simultaneously elliptical, in repeating key themes and points, but also effective, in using creative diverse examples to illustrate those points. I haven’t found anyone who can tells quite so unique a story about the practice and potential of storytelling as Seth does.
