Seth Godin, the marketing and blog guru, thinks he's all postmodern and up to date, y'know. But his book All Marketers are Liars shows he's about as ancient as they come.
The subtitle of the book is The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World. In order to sell things, Godin argues, you should not point out facts about your product, but should tell "authentic" stories about it.
Here is a relevant passage:
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 the worldview, and it will be heard.
Though he never mentions the word "mythology," and he uses the word "myth" only to describe a lie, Godin is referring to the mythological consciousness. Every culture (ancient AND modern) has a worldview-- a way of constructing and interpreting reality-- and every culture has a set of stories that help maintain that worldview, and help us to live day-to-day with a feeling that life makes sense.
Very often, these stories are not literally true (though they can be), but they are considered "authentic": that is, they ring true for us, and they contain a mythological truth that is separate from Enlightenment considerations of absolute, verifiable truth. Human beings have trusted mythological truth for thousands and thousands of years, and we show no signs of changing. Godin says we live in a "low-trust world," but in fact we are extremely credulous. We just need to hear the right story, and we'll immediately become high-trust.
Logic and absolute truth are relatively recent comers to the epistemological landscape; in the west, Plato got logic started off with a bang, but it didn't start to take until the Renaissance. Nowadays we think we are logical, but we spend a lot of time defending stuff that just isn't.
Take the entire Bush administration, for example. Our current president has verifiably lost his two presidential elections and yet, somehow, he's in the White House, because he's a man of prayer and God has got a plan for his life and this country (among other authentic stories).
Publishers Weekly, in a review quoted by Amazon.com, went into a little bit of a snit over Godin's advice to tell stories (= lies) to customers. Here is what they had to say:
Readers will likely find the book's practical advice as rudderless as its ethical principles.
PW falls into the trap of thinking that The Truth is always the only ethical option, when in fact, mythological truth is very often what people need and want to hear (especially when it's impossible to ascertain The Truth). Godin does say that out-and-out fraud is a no-no. All credit to him. But the compelling story has always had a particular power in our culture, and this should be acknowledged.
When a compelling story is harmful, its hearers need to step up and recognize it as such. That's one of the reasons why I write this blog. I'd like everyone to be able to tell when a comforting story gives us strength to carry on, and when it feeds our worst selves. The recent Caliber ad post is a great case in point. That ad tells a harmful story, in my opinion, about masculinity. I hope that everyone will recognize it as such, leave the Caliber alone, and buy a car that's better for the environment.
And that's my authentic story for the day.
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