book review on all marketers are liars

7/29/2019 Book Review on All Marketers Are Liars

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Shah and Anchor Kutchhi Engineering College-DoMS Page 1

BOOK REVIEW

ON

ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS

SUBMITTED TO:

PROF.SAMEER VIRANI

SUBMITTED BY:

NEHA JOSHI

FYMMS

ROLL NO 22


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Book Review: All Marketers Are Liars

The first reaction to this books title is liars = unethical. While the title may be a bit

gimmicky, it is a common belief shared by many peoplejust like other stereotypes such asall politicians are crooks, all lawyers are greedy, and all used car salesmen are pushy. But that

common belief emphasizes a key point.

We all view life from a particular worldview that weve constructed from our own

experiences, beliefs, and knowledge. This worldview acts as a bias or filter for how we

interpret whats going on around us right now. You and I might hear the same set of facts, but

because of these biases and filters, we might come to opposite conclusionsboth conclusions

will fit neatly into each of our worldview and align themselves with what each of us wants.

Yet, not all our beliefs are based on facts. Many are based on our gut reactions, our emotions,

or things weve heard from friends, family, or others whose opinion we value. Take, for

instance, the Riedel wine glass, about which wine guru Robert Parker said, The finest

glasses for both technical and hedonistic purposes are those made by Riedel. The effect of

these glasses on fine wine is profound. I cannot emphasize enough what a difference they

make. Many other wine experts share this opinion as well, and in turn, Reidel glasses cost$20 v/s your typical $1 glass.

Which leads one to wonderin a scientific, double-blind study where there was no way

people could tell one glass from another, could people really taste the difference? Its

doubtful. Yet, wine enthusiasts that insist that wine taste better in a Reidel glass continue to

pay top dollar for this luxury because they buy into the story that their wine tastes better in

this type of glass. The facts are irrelevant here. Its the experience that matters.

The point is that we tell ourselves stories all the time to justify our wants. How many times

have you procrastinated doing something until the following day, splurged on a shopping trip

because something you wanted was on sale, or bought magazines you didnt want to support

a fundraiser because you felt bad saying no? In each case, you told yourself a story to justify

your actions.


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This isnt just about hype but about crafting an authentic story about a remarkable product or

service that a target audience will relate to and believe in. If your product or services isnt

remarkable, people wont talk.

With the example of the Reidel wine glass, the marketers told the story of superb

craftsmanship, people bought into the story, and suddenly, the notion that the Reidel glass is

the best of the best became true. People continue to believe the story, buy the glasses, and

spread the word. As Godin states, Successful marketers are just the providers of stories that

consumers choose to believe.

Think about ithow often do you tell your family and friends about a mediocre experience

you just had? Now, how much more do you proclaim the wonders of something you love orwarn how terrible of an experience you just had? Its the extremes that make an impression,

not that your product or service was just good enough or your price was just reasonable

enough.

Of course, there are problems with storytelling. Some people use it to make up stuff about

impossible things their product or service can do and in the end, people become the victim of

fraud or can even be harmed. Godin uses Nestle as an example. Some time ago, UNICEF

accused Nestle of contributing to the death of more than a million babies by telling moms of

third world countries that bottle feeding was better than breast feeding. Initially, they

provided free samples, but later, people had to buy the formula. Often, however, because

families were too poor to keep buying enough formula, theyd water down the powered mix.

As a result, many babies got sick.

Nestle could have prevented this by specifically targeting moms who couldnt breast feed or

with AIDS, but instead, they told the story to everyone whod listen, people believed the lie,and babies died because if it. Godin stresses that as a marketer, it is your job to tell authentic

stories.

Marketers are wrong when they insist that all we do is offer optionsits up to consumers to

decide for themselves. Marketing is now so well developed and so embedded in our culture

that consumers no longer make decisions based on a rational analysis of facts. Instead they

decide based on the stories theyre told. To disclaim responsibility for a fraud is cowardly.


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Storytelling isnt a new concept in marketing. One of the fundamental principles of marketing

is crafting a marketing message that will be relevant to your target audience. Storytelling

takes that one step furtherinstead of bombarding people with endless facts and trying to

remain unbiased, you show them how your product or service fits into their worldview.

Stories make concepts simpler to process and remember in a world overloaded with too much

information.

His previous works focus on what he considers to be a truly remarkable product or service

and how to create one. If your product or service isnt remarkable, you wont be able to craft

an authentic story that people talk about. This isnt about selling mediocre products and

services for higher prices. Its about creating products and services that your clients and

customers will find meaningful.

The book is pretty much focused on a single point. That point is:

You dont get good loyal customers these days just by having a good product and talking

about it. The way you get them is to tell them a good story about your product and your

customers that let enough customers think, Hmmmm, this is my kind of place/company.

Then you have to live up to that story as if it were all true, to live the lie.

The author does not say that a good story will make up for a bad product or that you can

promise anything and not deliver. You still have to do those things; you just need to have a

good story on top of that.

Lets take a simple example of this: premium bread. Youll see people wholl offer all-

organic bread and give you the impression rural farmwives are busy making this bread the

old-fashioned country way, and this is much better than regular bread.

The reality almost certainly is that the bread is mass-produced using methods not unlike those

used to make Wonder Bread, or that there is little nutritional difference between the two, so

the story told or implied isnt true. Thats the kind of lie the author says is OK.

However, people are very likely to overlook those kinds of lies if they like the bread, and it is

different than Wonder Bread in ways they like. Theyll continue to pay rather more for the

bread, and like doing so.


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On the other hand, they would not overlook somebody who just made the equivalent of

Wonder Bread and put it in a folksy plastic bag. You have to give people something real on

which they can hang your story.

Another example can be found in cars. These days, luxury cars often use exactly the same

functional parts found in mid-priced models. Companies need to do that to get economy of

scale and to control costs. The real actual differences between mid-priced and high-priced

cars these days are better, more luxurious design and service. While these certainly add costs

to the high-priced models, the extra costs are usually nowhere near the amount of the

increased price tag. People pay lots for those relatively small extras, plus for the enhanced

image and prestige they think paying more will give them.

This concept can be applied a lot of different ways, but the key is to come up with a story that

people really identify with, and then deliver the product/company in observable ways that

correspond to the story. If the story says orimplies, Unlike big impersonal multinational

corporations, were home folks who really care about you, the fact that youre actually

owned by a multinational corporation can be overlooked by your customers, but youd better

take really good care of them.

How Does This Apply To the Tech Industry?

With one big exception, tech companies are generally not as aggressive with this approach as

others. Theyre more likely to associate a product with a lifestyle, not so much the company.

A good example of this is video card companies. They will try to sell a gamer lifestyle along

with their high-priced product.

However, most tech companies dont comprehensively tell stories about themselves as well

as their products, and when they do, they tend to be low-keyed.

Intel and Dell are good examples of this for business customers. The message in the business-

oriented ads for both companies is usually, Were here to give you the tools and support you

need to succeed. Intel emphasizes, soberly, the great efforts and expense they go through to

do this; Dell will emphasize their business-oriented services.


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The consumer market is a somewhat different beast, and while Intel has never come up with a

really effective story for consumers; Dell has a much different story and personality for the

home boys and girls, Good products at great prices!

The real champ at selling the company and products as a lifestyle choice is of course Apple.

Thats been true during the entire Mac era. Mac users believe all kinds of things about their

machines that simply arent literally true. Sometimes Apple encourages that belief overtly

i.e., their infamous benchmarks, sometimes covertly saying how great certain new features

or components are without giving any idea what the PC competition has or is doing.

The story of Apple fits the theme of this book. Nonetheless, Apple only has 3% market share,

so obviously this approach has its limits, and this is a point the author stresses. He says thatstory telling works very well in businesses where you can be quite profitable with a small

share of the overall business, and where you dont or cant expect to dominate. For instance,

if you own a restaurant in a city, you hardly need or would even want everyone in the city to

eat there all the time. You just want enough dedicated customers to keep coming to keep your

tables filled close to all the time.

The author suggests that narrow-casting in the form of story-telling is a much better idea in

these situations than trying to get everybody, especially if you can appeal to a small but big-

enough-for-your-purposes group that will happily pay more for whatever uniqueness you

have to offer them.

Such narrow-casting doesnt necessarily work too well for component manufacturers (though

it certainly would in other tech areas like websites), though that doesnt prevent one company

projecting multiple personalities to different groups the way Dell does.

Lets see how this concept applies to a story that is in the process of bein g told . . . .

Coming Up With A Better Story

The author points out that even if a company doesnt overtly tell a story about itself, people

will make one up about it for themselves. A short story is easier to remember than

encyclopedic knowledge of the company. Sometimes that story isnt too good, at least for the

company.


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In many cases, the stories people have created about AMD are pretty negative: the CPUs are

no good, or at least not as good as Intels, the platforms are unstable, even that theyre not

terribly compatible with software.

Most of these stories are pretty old. Many werent terribly true or true at all even way back

when. A few may have been somewhat true a long time ago, but arent today. Nonetheless,

they still exist, and for practical purposes, they are true for those who believe them.

Others negatively rate the company as being unreliable or un-business like compared to Intel.

That certainly is a bad story in the business world.

Even the people who like, even love, AMD often have attached a bad story (at least from

AMDs perspective) to it. That story at least used to be As good as Intel, but a lot cheaper.

Those telling the story think its a very positive one, and it is for those telling it, but not for

AMD. For them, the a lot cheaper part is BAD news.

If you look at the public efforts of Hector Ruiz since he became head of AMD, it would be

fair to say that his major effort has been to change AMDs stories from bad to good.

Some of the talk is no doubt meant to lay bad old stories to rest; some of the talk (and price

actions) is to get rid of the cheap label. The rest though seems to be more story-telling, with

actions meant to make the story come true (or at least true enough) someday.

The new story is AMD is as good as/better than Intel, and only the unjust, evil practices of

Intel have kept us from our just rewards. AMD has been saying the first half of the story for

some time now, but the complaint launching the lawsuit provides the second-half punch line

to it. The complaint is more story than lawsuit, and the author of this book would probably

say its an awfully good one. So far, its rung a lot of peoples chimes.

Some will say AMD isnt quite saying that, but thats certainly the impression it leaves those

who want to hear something like it.


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Some may get ticked at the story not because we dont think Intel has tried to freeze AMD

out or that AMD has been hurt by this or that AMD has at least some legitimate beef. No, we

get ticked because we know it isnt the whole story and that AMD has many self-inflicted

wounds, too. We dont have a problem with the facts, but the story the facts have been fixed

around, that its just Intel thats keeping AMD down.

But its a good story; indeed, it fits the typical fairy tale mode perfectly. Good, deserving

unfairly-treated hero goes through many challenges, and finally triumphs over evil. People

like this story a lot; they like it so much that they dont want to hear that the hero also often

gets into trouble by doing stupid thing. They prefer the story to the reality. .

Yet when you bring up some reasons why this tale could well end up not having a happyending, the reaction from some is like that of a little one after you tell him or her that the

bears really ate Goldilocks.

Marketers aren't really liars. Consumers are. Consumers tell themselves story based on the

marketing message they hear, filtered through their own lenses, and believe the marketing

they hear IF an authentic message is told.

The author explains that all marketers are not, in fact, liars: They are merely storytellers. The

liars, he writes, are the consumers who lie to themselves every day about what they wear,

where they live, how they vote and what they do to work. The author explains that successful

marketers are just the providers of the stories that consumers choose to believe. A good story

that satisfies customers is the source of a company's growth and profit. What it takes to make

it work, he writes, is a "complete dedication to and embrace of your story."

Stories are necessary to help consumers deal with the deluge of information they face every

day, and truly great stories "succeed because they are able to capture the imagination of large

or important audiences." A great story, he adds, is true, makes a promise, is trusted, is subtle,

happens fast, and often appeals to our senses. Great stories don't contradict themselves, and

they match our worldview by agreeing with what we already believe.


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All Marketers Are Liars is organized around a five-step process that people go through when

they encounter successful marketing. These steps are:

Step 1: Their worldview and frames got there before you did.

A consumer's worldview (the combination of his or her current rules, beliefs and biases)

affects the way he or she notices things and understands them. If a story is framed in terms of

that worldview, the consumer is more likely to believe it. Smart marketers; don't try to

change someone's worldview. Instead, they identify a group of people with a certain

worldview and frame their story in terms of that worldview. Since people of similar

worldviews "clump together," successful marketers find a previously undiscovered clump

and frame a story in the words, images and interactions that reinforce these people's biases.

Step 2: People only notice the new and then make a guess.

Consumers notice things when they change. As soon as they notice something new, they start

making guesses about what to expect next.

Step 3: First impressions start the story.

A first impression causes the consumer to make a fast, permanent judgment about what he or

she was just exposed to. He explains that "almost every important buying decision is made

instantaneously. These snap decisions affect everything we do, and we'll bend over backward

to defend them later."

Step 4: Great marketers tell stories we believe.

A story changes the way the consumer experiences a product or service. Consumers make a

prediction about what will happen next and rationalize anything that does not match the

prediction. The author writes that "authentic marketing, from one human to another, is

extremely powerful." Consumers and marketers win when the marketer tells a story

authentically and the company creates a product or service that does what the marketer says it

will do.


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Step 5: Marketers with authenticity thrive.

The author writes, "The authenticity of the story determines whether it will survive scrutiny

long enough for the consumer to tell the story to other people." No marketing succeeds if it

cannot find an audience that already wants to believe the story being told.

Great Stories:

According to Seth Godin, there are only two things these days that separate success from

failure in most organizations: Inventing stuff worth talking about and telling stories about

what you've invented. The difficult job of making up great stories is the imperative of today.

Marketers cannot use just any story. The only stories that work and spread are those that

demand to be repeated. By being authentic and remarkable, the story will be believed. The

author advises marketers to just tell the best story they can imagine.

For example, he cites Little Miss Match as one of his favourite small companies. It sells more

than 134 styles of socks to preteen girls, but none of the sets are matched (or clash). The story

the company tells is framed in terms of the preteen mind-set: The colourful, mismatched

socks give girls something to show their friends and demonstrate their hipness. When a girl

shows off her cool socks, she's hip. Then the idea spreads to other girls who never had the "I

want to be edgy" mind-set. This makes the story work.

He writes, "Make your story bigger and bigger until it's important enough to believe. The

author brings in a lot of examples, anecdotes to illustrate 5 key points which resonate

throughout the book. They are:

Customers worldviews got there before you did People only notice new and guess First impressions start the story Great marketers tell the story they believe Marketers with authenticity survive.


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Why tell stories while marketing products and services?

One of the first reasons is to spread ideas and ideas spread faster if there is a story element to

it. Also, in the age of media glut where every brand is trying t o vie for customers attention,

how else can a product catch the attention of the customer without a story element?

People only notice new and guess.

Customers are used to telling stories and narrating stories to one another. Its a natural thing

to do for them. Hence as a marketer one needs to understand the world view of the customer

and then weave a story in that context. The world view affects three things attention, bias,

and vernacular.

A few examples of world view are:

New technology can improve my life If I were prettier, I would be more popular If its a prescriptive medicine , then its safe All car sales men are liars. I like opera

Physical therapy will cure me faster than surgery Lets party Dont tell me shallow stories about consumerisms spend, spend. Talk to me about the inner

values, quality and life

World view is not a community. The size of each set of people who hold the world view

differs. Its the job of marketer to look at the world views , create new products which

address the unmet world views.

What is a great story?

First impressions start the story & Great marketers tell the story they believe

Great story is true Great story makes a promise Great story is trusted Great story is subtle, Great story happen very fast


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Great story often dont appeal to mind, but appeal to senses Great story is rarely aimed at everyone Great story doesnt contradict itself Great story is in synch with the customers world view

World view comprises rules, values, beliefs, biases that the individual customer brings to the

situation. Frames are elements of story that are used to paint the customers world view .

How should a great story be told?

Marketer should frame his story in such a way that it concurs with the world view. Very few

products have managed to change the world view of the customer (iPod, Napster, etc.). The

other means of narrating a great story is by creating easy to pass on metaphors for theproducts/ services, creating a context / ambience so that story is resonated through them in a

subtle way.

Whom should be the story told to?

In the creation process, the story must be ingrained in the minds of engineers, creators so that

story becomes a part of the product. In the distribution process, the story needs to pitched to

customers, evangelists, early adopters etc. so that it is passed on, there are enough market

conversations about the product.

Where the story should be told?

The story needs to be told at every touch point with the customer, be it website, be it the

customer rep, and be it the packaging of the product. Every effort should be made to see to it

the story, product tie each other perfectly.

At the end of the book, one cannot fail to notice the power of storytelling in creating world

class brands and successful companies. The examples mentioned in the book make a superb

list of case studies for anybody interested in marketing his/her product through storytelling.

Interesting ones are Starbucks, Riedel Wine, Amazon, iPod, Best Buy, Mac, Little mismatch,

South West, Kiehl since 1851 , Ralph Lauren, Blue Nile, woot.com, UK Travel agency

Lunnpoly, Whole Foods .


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Here's what I learned:

You must have a product that delivers on your story if you want long-term success. You need to start at the fringes to build passionate users, have these early adopters tell

your stories, and then you can move a bit to the middle to reach more.

You only tell your story once. Passionate users continue to tell your story, whetheryou want them to or not, so you might as well embrace them.

You will not reach everyone, so don't try to. Mass messages are too watered down andare not authentic enough to get viral and spread enough to make it worth your while.

book review on all marketers are liars

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