I'm reading Seth Godin's book All Marketers Are Liars. The premise is fascinating.

This is oversimplified, but his argument is that to market a product effectively, marketers have to come up with a story for consumers. The story needs to be genuine (which isn't quite the same thing as true). He also says that the easiest stories to tell are the ones that fit with the world view consumers already hold.

In the past, I've read about how people tend to think in stories. This makes sense to me. For instance, when people talk about their day, they don't deliver fragmented information unless it is part of a larger story, e.g. how many pieces of paper they stapled (unless it was way too many), how much coffee they drank (unless it gave them an opportunity to talk to the attractive new office mate), or how much ink they have left in their pen (unless it's part of a Dilbert Catch-22).

People also apparently tend to pay attention to information that supports their previously held opinions, but disregard information that doesn't. I'd heard this before, but it comes up in Godin's book.

So the idea that people think in self-reinforcing stories and that it's a potentially powerful marketing technique fits well with what I've learned in the past, which makes it easier for Godin to convince me it's true. This amuses me.

In all seriousness, though, this is an incredibly interesting book and well worth a read. It's got to be hard to apply to some products, but a useful exercise.

It also ties in nicely with a post over at advertising practitioner about the inconsistent story being told by Dove, Lynx and their parent company.