Lesson 1: Successful marketers tell stories people believe

The 32 year old shoe sales rep, who frequently makes up features about shoes to meet the sales quota, the 54 year old with a company, who’s product is struggling because it’s too feature-focused, and anyone who’s a fan of one particular brands products.

One of the most fun things to do with any Seth Godin book is look at the many many examples he provides and then try to come up with your own or more recent ones. All Marketers Are Liars  is from 2005, so i...

Frauds however, are a whole other topic.

For example, when VW lied about the amounts of CO2 their cars emitted , key people, including CEO Martin Winterkorn, lost their positions, their stock went down the tubes and they had to recall...

Even though we’d love to believe it, it’s become impossible to never buy a product that’s overpriced, because marketers have long caught on to the value of a good story. But actually, that’s okay.

According to Seth, there’s a difference between fibs and frauds. A fib is when you tell your spouse you had a late meeting, when really you were out shopping for their birthday present. It’s an “honest lie”, because you tell it to improve their birthday experience, not with mean intent.

That’s because our brains don’t like chaos and randomness. They thrive on logic. Have you ever thought your iPod is really smart, because it seems to play the same few songs you like over and over again, even when it’s set to shuffle?

Well, it’s not, but a random order of songs does never ...

You don’t check whether your new iPhone can do the same things the old one could do, that’s a given, you only look for the features that are new, like the better camera, lighter weight or new exterior design. For each new feature you discover, your brain instantly starts to make up inform...

The reason you think a pair of Nike’s is high quality and justifies a steep $100 price tag in addition to making you look cool, when they really just cost $5 to manufacture (hint: Macklemore’s Wings  tells a great story about those) is the...

That’s the power of storytelling. It goes to the point where it changes the customer experience, just because of what people believe.

We live in a world where people buy what they want, not what they necessarily need. Most of us have bought a designer piece of clothing, sportswear, device ...

He says that every wine tells his own unique story and the glass is the interpreter, which translates the message for the person who drinks from it. Scientific tests have later proven that there’s no difference between his glasses and others, but still wine experts and connoisseurs from a...

1. Marketing is about telling stories that people want to believe in.
2. It’s important that we want to believe in a story, because of the way our brains work.
3. While fibs can make a story better, you should never cross the line to fraud.

Want to tell an authentic st...

his book is all about storytelling. More so, it distinguishes between good stories which are just that – good stories – and those that are authentic.

All Marketers Are Liars is based on the idea that we believe whatever we want to believe, and that it’s exactly this trait of ours, which marketers use (and sometimes abuse) to sell their products by inf...