offerbook 6

The Big Idea

What sells a product these days? Is it price point? Is it the buyer's need? Are product features and benefits the deciding factors for customers to buy? Seth Godin says it is none of the above. Consumers buy products when they fall for a marketer's story. A successful marketer has to be able to come up with stories that consumers want to believe. The stories should fit a consumer's worldview and encourage people to talk to others about it. When a marketer's story is authentic and remarkable, the product will sell.

Highlights

Telling stories is an age-old tradition used by people to make sense of natural phenomena such as seasons and sicknesses. Marketers did not invent it, but they have used it for years to sell products, services, and ideas. Godin suggests that marketers and consumers are conspirators in this lying, or story-telling business. Marketers tell the stories. The consumers, who lie to themselves, buy the stories.

What makes a great story? Great stories should:

be true.
make a promise.
be trusted.
be subtle.
happen fast.
not appeal to logic, but often appeal to our senses.
rarely be aimed at everyone.
never contradict themselves.
agree with our worldview.

Marketers Also Have Responsibilities.
Since marketing is about spreading ideas, they have the power to affect people and even whole societies in both positive and negative ways. Storytelling, in the hands of the marketer, should always recognize its responsibility to the society.
Marketing, Then and Now
It used to be that marketers sold commodities that people needed by promoting practical and objective matters such as price and product features. These days, marketers answer more to consumers' wants than needs. Wants are things they
covet for emotional reasons such as $125 Pumas or an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne. In the Golden Age of television, marketing was a matter of buying 60 seconds of airtime, and using that time to tell a simple story to create demand. It is not that simple now. Marketing, albeit still a very powerful tool, has become more complex and challenging.

Step 1: Their Worldview and Frames Got There Before You Did

A person's worldview is his set of beliefs, values, rules, assumptions, and biases influenced by one's family, friends, affiliations and experiences. As each combination of influences is unique to each individual, there are many diverse worldviews out
there.
What Do Worldviews Affect?
1. The consumer's attention - will he notice or ignore you?
2. The consumer's bias - his points of view
3. The vernacular - the choice of media, the tone of voice, the words used, colors, images, typefaces that influence the consumers' attention and bias.

Step 2: People Notice Only the New and Then Make a Guess

By nature, people only notice changes. This point is illustrated by using the example of the frog, which is programmed to catch food by noticing only moving flies. Consumers, similarly, only notice something when it breaks the status quo.
The usual steps we follow are:

1. Looking for causation or coincidence.
2. Making predictions based on the causation.
3.Relying on cognitive dissonance.

Step 3: First Impressions Start the Story

Consumers, more often, make snap decisions based on little or no data, then stick to those decisions. This ability was inherited from our ancestors who had to make quick judgments for survival. This is the phenomenon at work in job interviews, speed dating, and selecting politicians. This phenomenon of First Impression is an important factor for marketers. This means that once a consumer believes something, it will be hard to change that worldview.

Step 4: Great Marketers Tell Stories We Believe

The complicity between marketers and consumers is about consumers wanting to believe the lies they themselves created in their minds. Believing the lies makes them feel good about the products they desire, the ideas they buy, and even the
candidates they vote for.

In a developed country, the tug between needs and wants usually favor wants. This is
why some consumers buy bottled water even if potable tap water is available. It's a
want, not a need.

Step 5: Marketers with Authenticity Thrive

Godin refers to an earlier book he penned; it's about the purple cow. A purple cow is a product or experience that is so noteworthy that people enthusiastically and voluntarily endorse it. He says that every marketer's goal is to have a purple cow.
Hype alone, when not backed by truly remarkable goods and services, does not make a purple cow.

Every Picture Tells a Story
It's the Combination of Senses that Convinces the Skeptical Consumer

Competing in a Lying World

Be the First to Tell that Story.
Finding the Right Community
Splitting the Community
The Other Way to Grow

Remarkable? The Cow Has Not Left the Building

Going to the Edges: Getting People to Vote
When Storytelling Doesn't Seem to Work Very Well

Bonus Part 1: Master Storytellers and Those who are Still Trying

Storytelling is not a one-shot thing. Once you start telling it, you have to continue telling it. Jackson Diner succeeded in attracting foodies to sample Indian food. The story spread and made its way to Zagat Survey Restaurant Guide, and now the diner is crowded.

Bonus Part 2: Advanced Riffs

Godin ends the book with these relevant concepts:

Fertility
Changing World Views
Old Stories Die Hard
Explaining Failure
Oxymorons
The Worldview of Fear
It's the Story. Not the facts.