On Reading “All Marketers Are Liars (Tell Stories)”
I am creating a university journalism class on Media Entrepreneurship with a colleague and he is considering a book by Seth Godin: All Marketers Are Liars(Tell Stories). He asked me to take a look.
As you can see from the images above, right off, buying the book might be confusing. The book was first serialized in Fortune and then published by Penguin in 2005. When I was searching for it, I found versions with “Are Liars” crossed out and “Tell Stories” scribbled over the cover, as above.
I guess I am too literal. I thought the new cover indicated a revised edition. But apparently not. It still carries the original 2005 copyright. Godin will explain the altered cover in the opening.
So let’s get to the reading. Don’t let the large images above fool you. The book is slim and small — 5"x7" — 220 fast pages.
Godin is an excellent writer. He was one of the earliest bloggers, dating back to the 1990s. He is still perhaps the most influential blogger in the business world. The book blurb says he is “consistently one of the twenty-five most widely read bloggers in the English language.”
You Believe Things that Aren’t True
His provocative opening words: “You believe things that aren’t true” (xv). A good start. His preface has a two-part premise: We believe what we want to believe and it then becomes a self-fulfilling truth. For example, if we think the more expensive wine is better, it is.
His second part: If you are telling stories to people who want to hear them, you will be tempted to tell stories that are not true. Godin goes on to say that sort of storytelling used to work. He mentions Senator Joe McCarthy and his successful prosecution of the “Communist threat.” But, he says, “The thing is, lying doesn’t pay off anymore” (xvi).
Fifteen years later, 2020, I wonder if Godin still thinks so — in a time when each party feels the other has lied about the presidential election. It won’t be the last time that I think about our era as I read this 2005 book.
Godin then posits three questions to ask every company or candidate: What’s your story? Will people believe it? Is it true?
Godin ends the preface by apologizing for the original title. And says his publisher allowed him to try a new jacket (if not title) — thus our two covers above are explained. He now says, “All marketers are storytellers. Only the losers are liars” (xviii). I am liking this early emphasis on truth.
Unfortunately, it does not last.
Are $20 Wine Glasses a Lie?
Godin moves to the book’s “Highlights,” fleshed out by marketing stories, such as people who pay $20 for a Riedel wine glass because they feel (are told) it makes the wine taste better. His highlights: Everyone is a liar. We tell ourselves stories that can’t possibly be true because believing those stories allow us to function in life. Marketers lie to consumers because consumers demand it.
In 2021 and our era of serious debates about “truth,” however, some may raise eyebrows at these highlights. Godin goes on to say a great story is true — but not true because it is factual but because it is consistent and authentic [my italics](19–20). Ugh. I fear I may repeat this Ugh throughout.
I thought of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and how Postman excoriated the idea that politicians did not need to be truthful — they only needed to seem truthful and authentic.
Is Godin affirming authenticity over truth? I felt my resistance growing. It doesn’t help that Godin continually talks about companies telling lies and consumers sharing lies.
He moves to a more specific discussion of marketing. The important part of this chapter is that production — the making of something — has become less important. It is simply easier to produce things or have someone produce things in our times, he says.
Instead, two things are needed for success: 1) Invent stuff worth talking about; 2) Tell stories about what you’ve invented (36).
Worldviews and Frames
Godin then breaks down marketing into steps. Step 1 affirms that people already have worldviews and frames, influenced by parents, schools, places and experiences. They are what you believe, your biases (44). Worldviews affect even how — and if — people pay attention to your message. He says, “A worldview is the lens used to look at every decision a person is asked to make” (65).
Godin’s advice: Don’t even try to change these views. Identify the population who will agree with your worldview (41). Later, he says, “People don’t want to change their worldview. They like it, they embrace it and they want it to be reinforced” (60). I thought this was a good insight, which hearkens all the way to Walter Lippmann and Public Opinion in 1922..
And then another nice insight — Godin says opportunity lies in finding a neglected worldview (43). He gives Starbucks as an example of a shared worldview discovered for the first time (45). Who knew Americans would like Italian cafe culture?
“Worldview” is a concept that I am used to thinking about in terms of people’s political beliefs and media use. And Godin applies his thought to politics with an intriguing insight: “A vote is a statement about the voter, not the candidate” (42). Each person wants to hear stories that support his or her worldview.
Godin then focuses on another concept I use in political communication: frames. For Godin, a frame presents an idea in a way that embraces a consumer’s worldview. “Frames are the words and images and interactions that reinforce a bias someone is already feeling” (51). And Godin rightly emphasizes this connection between frames and worldviews.
Worldviews and frames are not just simple repetitions of appeals to what people already believe. They can sometimes be used to bring change by spreading news “to people who are open to being convinced of something brand new” (52). How does this happen? A niche group has to influence other people (54). That conversation happens in a community — “a group that shares a worldview and also talks about it” (68).
I thought this entire step was an interesting way to broaden what I consider essential political communication topics — worldviews, frames, community and media.
Instead of a new chapter, Godin offers Step 2 — “People notice only the new and then make a guess” (75). It is a brief nine pages. It could have been done with just the title! But Godin does get off a good line about Coke and Pepsi and blind taste tests: “We drink the can, not the beverage” (83).
First Impressions and Believing the Lie
Step 3 is “First Impressions Start the Story.” Godin references Malcom Gladwell’s Blink, which emphasizes that humans make decisions on almost no data — and then remain wedded to those decisions (87). (I was thinking of politics again.) It is a result of evolution, Godin says. Humans had to make snap decisions in jungles. And modern man doesn’t have the energy or interest to change those decisions once they are made.
But I groaned over Godin’s conclusion about first impressions. He says this is why authenticity matters instead of facts! “It doesn’t really matter whether a story we tell to a consumer is completely factual [my emphasis]. If it’s a good story, if that story is framed in terms of his worldview, then he’ll tell himself the story and believe in the lie” (90–91).
Ugh. What happened to: “What’s your story? Is it true?”
Step 4 continues in this vein: “Great Marketers Tell Stories We Believe.” The book shows it age. Godin wants to review the 2004 presidential election. It seems like a century ago. John Kerry? You wish that Godin had revised the book with additions of the 2016 and 2020 elections. These elections centered around worldviews, frames and discussions of lies and truth. No matter where you sat on the political spectrum, you were convinced the other side was lying. While that may confirm Godin’s thesis, it may also condemn it.
Godin then jumps to “Examples: Stories Framed Around Worldviews.” We get discussions of Banquet Crock-Pot Classics, in which the company convinced people that its product can be just like a home-cooked meal — “they told a story, not the facts” (106). Ugh. Other stories: a small lingerie shop; expensive sushi restaurants; Ralph Lauren shirts; Seth Godin books; Amazon customer service, and organic foods.
Fibs, Frauds and “Honest Liars”
Perhaps Godin feels the unease that might come from his argument about authenticity and truth. He returns to it in the section, “Important Aside: Fibs and Frauds.” He returns to the wine glasses of Georg Riedel.
He writes: “Georg Riedel is a fibber — an honest liar. He’s an honest liar because he tells his customers something that isn’t true — his glasses make wine taste better — and then the very act of believing his lie makes the statement true” (118). An honest liar. Really? Not in our times. Ugh.
To Godin, fibs — lies — are okay but frauds are not. For Godin, the problem with fraud is not in the lie but in the fact that the consumer finds out and gets angry. Now, “it’s deceitful” (119). That’s fraud. It reminds me of the old saying, “In Jersey, everything’s legal, as long as you don’t get caught.”
Godin says, “Nobody really minds a fib, and if our consumers find out that our story isn’t based on fact, they’re not enraged” (120).
And what if, in 2020, your fib is “the election was stolen,” and some consumers believe you and are enraged. Or what is your fib was “the election was not stolen” and some consumers believe you and are enraged at those who do not believe. Since you are not worried about the facts or the truth, what do we care or do about these “fibs?” Ugh.
Killing Babies
Godin then goes to a story I know well: the scandal surrounding Nestlé marketing infant baby formula in developing countries. I have written about this a lot.
Godin explains the story well. He notes at the outset: More than a million babies might have died because of this marketing. The stakes could not be higher. The controversy began as early as the 1960s. As birth rates dropped in developed Western countries, infant formula producers looked for new markets in less-developed nations. People there had little experience with infant formula. Marketing and advertising were needed. Nestlé responded with marketing.
It wasn’t long before some NGOs, such as Save the Children, began to accuse Nestlé of unethical promotions. They claimed that Nestlé distributed free powdered formula samples to women in hospitals and maternity wards.
The problem: when women use the formula and do not breast-feed, their breasts eventually no longer produce milk. Then, when the free formula runs out, the women must continue to buy the formula to feed their babies. And many do not have the money. Their babies die.
The NGOs claimed that the company even dressed people to look like nurses or health care workers to distribute the formula. They said the company offered gifts to persuade hospital workers to promote and distribute its formula.
Nestlé denied the charges. But in 1977, a remarkable global boycott was begun against the company. The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF developed international codes for the marketing of infant formula. Nestlé agreed to the code. But NGOs charge to this day that Nestlé and others are ignoring the code.
Godin’s take on this is complicated. At first, it almost looks like the fault is with the desperate mothers. Because the story wasn’t accurate, “the effect of a consumer lying to herself was devastating” (123). But he does eventually arrive at this lesson in bold face: “Just because people might believe your story doesn’t give you a right to tell it” (123).
Okay, but using Godin’s logic, why can’t Nestlé say it was only telling a fib, just like Georg Riedel?
Godin wants to believe a line exists between fibs and lies. He says he is angry when marketing is used for nefarious purposes. He wants companies to keep promises. He wants to believe in “truth and beauty” (127). BUT he still wants to assert that “authenticity” is an adequate replacement for “truth.”
One could argue that Donald Trump is incredibly authentic. Millions of people believe him. Yet millions of others do not believe him. Democracy seemed for a few weeks to hang in the balance. Is this a confirmation of Godin’s thesis or a contradiction? Wouldn’t it be better to have settled on the truth rather than what seemed authentic to either side?
I know Godin was writing in 2005. And our problems in 2020 were not his problems. But: Why can’t Godin just say: Marketing has to be . . . true.
Step 5, “Marketers with Authenticity Thrive” and “Competing in the Lying World”continue in the same vein. Godin offers great writing as he tries to thread a needle between authenticity and truth. Many of the lessons are insightful. Success came to one company that focused on “telling a story to the underserved worldview in the community of bike buyers” — comfort (157). I have no trouble with that — as long as the story was true.
In a Bonus chapter, “Master Storytellers,” Godin touches on the success of Fox News. And again he tries to thread the needle. “Instead of its being a random mix of individual biases, Fox News chose to tell a coherent story, a lie that its viewers can choose to believe” (170). I don’t think the insight will be palatable to Fox News viewers or to MSNBC viewers. Now news, as well as marketing, can be lies.
Bottom Line
I use this subhead with a little bit of irony for its marketing orientation. But, bottom line, I think All Marketers Are Liars was likely a fabulous book. For marketing. In its day. 15 or more years ago.
But in our time, which is having serious and painful discussions of trust and truth, Godin’s approach to truth and authenticity needs explaining and updating — even in marketing circles.
This is no fault of Godin. Books age.
Another but: Even 15 years ago, I would have doubts about using this book in a Media Entrepreneurship class, taught in a journalism program. Even 15 years ago, not many journalism programs would be comfortable telling their students that fibs and lies are okay. Or that “It doesn’t really matter whether a story we tell to a consumer is completely factual. If it’s a good story, if that story is framed in terms of his worldview, then he’ll tell himself the story and believe in the lie” (90–91).
Again this is no fault of Godin. He did not write this for journalists.
But still. Ugh.
