Story Time

Nice to see Seth Godin — one of the great marketing originals — writing in a recent edition of the progressive magazine Ode. His theme: how marketing can save (or destroy) the world. His premise: stories are powerful, and modern marketing amplifies this ancient power beyond measure.

Seth appeals to us marketers to exercise a little conscience about what we say, and how. He points out that bad stories have killed more people than nuclear weapons, and he bemoans the cynicism of those who hide behind a "free market" ethos to justify lying to the public.

For a marketer, the issue is not so much the story as the client. If you pick cynical clients, you will get paid to lie. In this respect, I consider myself blessed. For a long time I have attracted clients with decent values at the worst, and at the best, extraordinary vision.

The very idea of marketing gets associated with dishonesty. We tend to assume marketers make things look better than they are. Isn't that their job? Funnily enough, I often find that my clients' truth is actually better than appearances. "If only they knew..." these frustrated entrepreneurs lament about their non-buying prospects.

For example, I've been advising a little school that provides child-centered education for toddlers and up. The local parents tend to see it as a high-class baby minding service, when in reality the school is giving its miniature students extraordinary tools for social, emotional and cognitive development.

In that situation, you have to know what every therapist knows: the difference between want and need. In principle, the trick is to meet people in what they want, and lead them to what they need. No bait and switch here — we don't have to risk Seth Godin's ire! It's about framing the story in terms that resonate, creating an emotional environment where new ideas can take root and flourish.

Great storytellers not only speak to their audience, they listen, too. And it's the listening that makes the story sing.

Here meanwhile are Seth's nine principles (abbreviated) for succesful story telling . Great stories, he says:

1. Are true
2. Make a promise
3. Are trusted
4. Are subtle
5. Happen fast
6. Appeal to our senses
7. Are rarely aimed at everyone
8. Don't contradict themselves
9. Agree with our world view

Uncountable Values

Caught a few moments of futurist Alvin Toffler talking to Newt Gingrich on my favorite TV channel, C-SPAN (which I love for its goofy and unhurried production style).

Alvin was discussing his concept of the "prosumer" — the consumer who also produces. He was saying that the productive activities of the "prosumer" don't get registered in the monetary economy, yet still add tangible value. For example if you go to Home Depot and buy a can of paint, that purchase gets counted towards the GDP. But your activity painting your own wall doesn't, though it would have done, had you hired a painter.

So there's a mass of real economic acitivity that never shows up in the numbers. Alvin estimates it at about equal to the currently recorded GDP. (Isn't this what feminists have been saying about housework since Simone de Beauvoir?)

We might expand on the "prosumer" to embrace the "marsumer". People do stuff today that a little while back was the exclusive purivew of professional marketers. That's an impact of technology, of course. As someone who remembers the nose-pinching smell of the school duplicator — the Kitty Hawk of desktop publishing — I can still be startled by how easy it's become to whip up a four-color brochure, launch a web site or even self-publish a full-length book.

From podcasts to teleconferences, from pre-printed postcards to mailable DVDs, if you have something to sell, promote or just pester people with, there is an ever-growing arsenal of gizmos at your disposal, at ever-declining costs.

For the entrepreneur this is good news and bad. The good news is that the global playing field keeps getting flatter, and the entry ticket keeps getting cheaper. The bad news is that technology can make a fool of anyone. Owning a Stradivarius doesn't make you a great violinist. And having a fistful of high-gloss tools doesn't make you a great marketer.

What does is what always did — an exceptional understanding of human nature.

The more you know about how people tick, the more effective your marketing will be. Of course there is real value in good communication media, just as there is in honing your strategic and tactical skills. Nevertheless, old-fashioned psychology — the streetwise variety — will always be the single most decisive factor in anyone's marketing success.