All Marketers Are Liars...

is the title of Seth Godin's newest book. It's a great explanation of how all of us as consumers think and lie to ourselves about what a product or service will do for us. If we believe it, then we buy it. The marketer's job is not to lie in reality, it's actually to tell the truth. S/he must share an authentic story about the product/service that gives the customer the meat to convince himself what he wants to believe.

You can get the book here

If you want to understand marketing in the post-Industrial era, you could do a LOT worse than read all of his works. (Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, Idea Virus...to name a few).

I actually had a conversation with him a few years ago. Well, not really, but when I started my company, SilentFrog, I was working on the marketing plan. My mother-in-law had given me a book called "Accidental Genius" which advocates a Private Writing approach to help you uncover ideas that are locked in your brain. One of the techniques is to write a dialogue between you and someone whose opinion you respect to gain the benefits of his/her insight. I had a 4 page "discussion" with Seth that helped me clarify some of my thinking. It was great. I think I still have it somewhere.

Pretty much my entire flight (when I wasn't sleeping) from Kennedy to Tel Aviv last week was devoted to reading All Marketers Are Liars Heck, I even skipped the movies :-)