All Marketers are Liars

Hmmmm interesting...finally I decode my career...finally get to know what I have to keep on doing to be successful.... "All I have to do is lie"

Now thats where the catch is...

"Marketers aren't really liars, they are just really good at telling stories which customer wants to listen"-Seth Godin (in book - All Marketers are Liars"

There is a limitation to telling stories - Marketer MUST tell stories which matches with the viewpoint of his audience - else will the audience believe? NO and he fails.

This is how all these fairness creams are earning big time. They are selling you a story that you want to believe - see any advt. - most of these are today concentrating on girls getting jobs by using "XYZ Fairness Cream". This is a central story being used on our television. and are people buying it - YES.
End result, customer willingly fooled. Customer was made to accept a story which he/she would believe.

And from there the Book "The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big Difference" takes over the mantle.
Once the people start believing your stories, they will spread it on their own - "WORD OF MOUTH ADVERTISING" - The best thing which can happen to a product.

The Best example for this is the Apple iPod.
It wasn't the first MP3 player with hard disk available on the market. But its the product which now is earning Apple more money than its Macs. Why?
They had a simple product - concentrating on just small compact design, easy PC Connectivity and Good battery life. Today it has a whopping 65% market share in portable MP3 players and tooooo whopping 92% market share in hard disk based MP3 Players. It was launched in November 2001 and took over 1 and a half years to start on a path of success by clocking 1 million sales count. It took a real long time for that. But after that there was no stopping. Today it has crossed 6 million sales.

What made iPod a hit, while others could only just watch and actually could do nothing. Even Microsoft till date is only looking and doesn/t know what to do.
Here comes the marketer. Am sure the person who devised the marketing strategy for iPod should be a marketing god. Just look through any of the iPod advts. and you can see where they sold. Simplicity, small size-huge space and good battery life were onething. There were many who had similar or more offerings - Creative and Dell and many more. But then Apple positioned it as a "Must have Fashion Accessory" and this accessory was affordable for the targetted segment of students and young professionals.There was a coolness factor associated with it.

Steve Jobs rightfully says - iPod has become a cultural phenomenon.

Apple is depending a lot on Word of Mouth. Now iPod is more of a success because of the Network Effect - there is a huge iPod community which is growing and many more people wanna be a part of it - I ALSO WANNA HAVE ONE....maybe soon I will be an iPodder.

As one iPod user said: "It's a society within itself. You've got your biker community, your hip-hop community and now you've got your iPod community. It's all about those wires."

The essence of the communication from Apple was basically that you wear iPod and not own iPod. This made it an essential, just like you wear clothes.

So iPod continues to live on with its new offering iPod shuffle being a major success - even though there are competitors like Creative (also some other brands or non-brands) with products cheaper and having more features than iPod shuffle.

But then to this story telling there is a limitation - it should be authentic and in no way way should the marketer try to be a fraud.

Currently Reading: The Tipping Point
Plan to Read: All Marketers are Liars