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by
Seth Godin
Read between
April 21 - May 8, 2019
Either you’re going to tell stories that spread, or you will become irrelevant.
People can’t handle the truth.
If you think the pancakes at the IHOP taste better, then they do. Because you want them to.
They buy the way the process makes them feel.
They buy a story.
The facts are irrelevant. In the short run, it doesn’t matter one bit whether something is actually better or faster or more efficient. What matters is what the consumer believes.
Marketers profit because consumers buy what they want, not what they need. Needs are practical and objective, wants are irrational and subjective. And no matter what you sell—and whether you sell it to businesses or consumers—the path to profitable growth is in satisfying wants, not needs. (Of course, your product must really satisfy those wants, not just pretend to!)
Deseos. No necesidades
The way Stephanie felt when she bought the Pumas was the product. Not the sneakers
great story is true. Not true because it’s factual, but true because it’s consistent and authentic.
Great stories make a promise. They promise fun or money, safety or a shortcut.
Great stories are trusted. Trust is the scarcest resource we’ve got left.
Great stories are subtle. Surprisingly, the less a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story becomes.
Great stories happen fast. They engage the consumer the moment the story clicks into place. First impressions are far more powerful than we give them credit for.
Great stories don’t appeal to logic, but they often appeal to our senses.
Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone.
then that tiny audience spreads the story.
Great stories don’t contradict themselves.
great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead, the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.
In other words, it wasn’t Kiehl doing the marketing—it was his customers. Kiehl’s told a story, and the customers told the lie to themselves and to their friends.
This is what makes it all work: a complete dedication to and embrace of your story.
Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization.
we don’t all want the same things!
Each person has a different set of biases and values and assumptions, and those worldviews are influenced by their parents, their schools, the places they live and the experiences they’ve had to date.
identify a population with a certain worldview, frame your story in terms of that worldview and you win.
The most successful, fastest-moving examples are those where the marketer used a frame to leverage an existing worldview, not to change one.
worldview is not who you are. It’s what you believe. It’s your biases. A worldview is not forever. It’s what the consumer believes right now.
People clump together into common worldviews, and your job is to find a previously undiscovered clump and frame a story for those people.
Some of these groups may be small, but they can take your story and run with it. They can turn a small market into a cult, into a movement and then a trend, and finally into a mass market.
While targeting the right worldview is essential, the real magic of marketing occurs when you use a frame. A frame allows you to present an idea in a way that embraces the consumer’s worldview, not fights it.
Frames are the words and images and interactions that reinforce a bias someone is already feeling.
A frame is your first step in telling a persuasive story. I’m not recommending that you only tell people what they want to hear, that you pander to their worldview, that marketing is nothing but repeating what people already know. Far from it. Instead I believe the best marketing stories are told (and sold) with frames but ultimately spread to people who are open to being convinced of something brand new.
It’s not enough to find a niche that shares a worldview. That niche has to be ready and able to influence a large group of their friends.
a marketer, you can no longer force people to pay attention. Buying television ads or calling people at home is no guarantee that people will listen to what you have to say. This is why permission marketing is so effective—you reach people who have a worldview that the messages you promise to send them are a valuable part of their lives.
VERNACULAR Once you’ve presented a story to people who share your worldview and are paying attention, the vernacular you use becomes astonishingly important. The words, colors, typefaces, images, media, packaging, pricing—all the ways you can possibly color your story—become far more important than the story itself.
because no one is here for the product. We’re here for the story and the way believing it makes us feel.
The desire to do what the people we admire are doing is the glue that keeps our society together. It’s the secret ingredient in every successful marketing venture as well.
The best worldviews from a marketer’s point of view are those that include a healthy dose of “I gotta share this!”
all of the word of mouth in the world is the work of a small subset of the population. Call them thought leaders or bzzagents or sneezers or early adopters, this personality trait means that some consumers are worth far more than others to anyone interested in telling a story.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling $3 socks at Kmart or $3,000,000 paintings in Miami. A lot of people want what everyone else is buying.
Step 1: Every consumer has a worldview that affects the product you want to sell. That worldview alters the way they interpret everything you say and do. Frame your story in terms of that worldview, and it will be heard.
Instead of being scientists, the best marketers are artists.
They realize that whatever is being sold (a religion, a candidate, a widget, a service) is being purchased because it creates an emotional want, not because it fills a simple need.
our brain is always inventing a plot, a story, an explanation for what we see.
Step 2: People only notice stuff that’s new and different. And the moment they notice something new, they start making guesses about what to expect next.
if you can cover all the possible impressions and allow the consumer to make them into a coherent story, you win.
Step 3: Humans are able to make extremely sophisticated judgments in a fraction of a second. And once they’ve drawn that conclusion, they resist changing it.
No, not a story in a speech, but living a story, consistently telling us the story in everything he did and said.
If consumers have everything they need, there’s nothing left to buy except stuff that they want. And the reason they buy stuff they want is because of the way it makes them feel.
But is the utility of the product the main way people shape their desires? No way!
Step 4: Stories let us lie to ourselves. And those lies satisfy our desires. It’s the story, not the good or the service you actually sell, that pleases the consumer.
