THE TOP TEN (MARKETING)

Seth Godin's re-release of All Marketers Are Liars recently had the title changed to All Marketers Tell Stories. He thinks the later title is better. I think it is weaker. His name will sell the book, but to newcomers it doesn't have the cachet or come on of the older title which showed him on the cover with a Pinocchio-like nose. That is what made ME buy the book even quicker. The book is about being "authentic." Being authentic is the better road to take though it may take longer to get there.

Well, good marketers do tell stories. You see lots of stories in my writings because I think it is a better way to engage the reader. It also takes some of the abstraction away.

For example, I just upgraded my copy of Adobe's InDesign from CS2 to CS4. While waiting in the doc's office yesterday I read of a feature that was in CS3 (I checked what I had missed by bypassing CS3) that I had thought about a long time ago, the ability to make "type," even one character, look 3-D, and also in color. I had thought of this idea with respect to emphasizing some important point on a typeset chessboard! I "know" it will be in the CS4 version! Hopefully, good for my customers--perhaps I will tell a story about that as I tried to imagine how Adobe could accomplish a feat such as that which had never been done before except on the screen.

The problem with some marketers is they really DO lie. An example: I can remember a couple years ago seeing a DVD title of mine on a web site showing their top 10 sellers. My item was #5. It would have been thrilling except for the fact that I received an e-mail from the guy responsible for that who had ALWAYS impressed me as phony AND a liar (he couldn't keep commitments). In his email he told me what a DOG my product was. (It wasn't really, I just hadn't silk-screen printed the DVDs!) So he was telling me one story and web viewers another. I can't believe he was so brain-dead to relate this. Fortunately, he's gone, and I predicted to him that would happen.

(I saved the screen shot in case he denied it. He was gone before he could.)

True stories are usually better than made up stories and if a rough edge is "rounded," that can make it even more appealing without ruining the drama. The movies do this all the time when they use the phrase "based on a true story." Yeah, right.

I'll get back to this subject next week when it comes to giving out Gift-Cards 6-8 weeks AFTER you have responded to something. Doesn't that show you how much they really care?

PS: The above picture of Seth's older book cover is also featured on page 230 of my book, The Chess Assassin's Business Manual (plug).