Research library Required reading Why people say yes
People Like Us Do Things Like This.
Seth Godin's All Marketers Are Liars made the case that people buy the story they already believe. His daily blog has been making the case for permission, trust and the right small audience for more than twenty years. We read the blog.
Seth Godin · All Marketers Are Liars, and his blog · 2005; blog since 2002
What it is
All Marketers Are Liars came out in 2005. The title was a provocation, and Godin later changed it for future editions to All Marketers Tell Stories, which is closer to the point. Buyers don’t weigh facts and then decide; they hear a story that fits what they already believe, and then tell it to themselves. In his words:
“Stories make it easier to understand the world. Stories are the only way we know to spread an idea. Marketers didn’t invent storytelling. They just perfected it.” Quoted in the publisher’s description of the book
The blog is the bigger body of work. It started in 2002, and for many years now he hasn’t missed a day.
What we took from it
Permission, first. Long before the inbox filled up, he defined it like this:
“Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.” “Permission Marketing,” seths.blog, January 31, 2008
And the idea he keeps returning to: people act on identity. They buy, join and stay because of who they think they are.
“People like us do things like this.” “A branding exercise,” seths.blog, July 17, 2024
Where it shows up in our work
Godin’s advice, over and over: decide who it’s for. That’s the same move Power Law Performance makes with numbers. When a few customers carry most of the value, the job is to know which “people like us” those are, tell them the story they already believe, and stop paying to tell it to everyone.
The Free Lamborghini is the opposite: a story for everyone, which ends up being a story for the people who believe in something for nothing.
Next on the shelf Kevin Hillstrom, Hillstrom's Database Marketing, and MineThatData