I tried to post my comment on http://www.copyblogger.com/authority-intensive-seth-godin/#comment-1241892, but for some reason it did not appear there. I assumed it was too big. It also did not let me to post the comment again, saying that the comment was already there. So I’m posting that comment on my website.
Update: Brian Clark from Copyblogger was kind to look for my comment on his website but could not find it. So it was some glitch in the system.
Although I find Seth Godin stories both really interesting, useful and even spicy (e.g. Seth was even forced to change the title of his book “All marketers are liars” which seemed too offending to someone), I’m afraid that the ideas in the book “All marketers are liars” can be taken too straight by readers and as a result marketers (and others) do really LIE instead of telling us authentic stories.
Seth himself says that marketing is a great power and implies responsibility. And he states the question: ‘How are are you going to use this power?’ But do people (incl. marketers) really care about the responsibility?
Moreover, I guess too much things have gone wrong into story-telling (or into lie if you like) both on micro and macro (and even meta) level. Misleading sales campaigns, consumerism itself based on marketers’ efforts, fake financial reports (e.g. remember Enron?), fake ratings of financial institutions, derivatives which is fake money, stock prices which are fake indicators of company’s value, stock market which has turned from genuine market into casino based on marketing laws etc etc etc. I don’t even touch politics as it is the whole story (full of lie).
Seth, if you read my comment by any chance, don’t you think that instead of telling people to make up stories and believe in them, it would be more vital to tell them be truly authentic (as far as it is possible) and teach them how to seek for authentic, trustworthy and genuine things? You have the power and the audience, don’t you want to take this mission?
You say that ‘A great story is true. Not true because it’s factual, but true because it’s consistent and authentic.’ I understand, for example, that Newton’s and Einstein’s stories (theories) are not totally true (as any other theory). And their stories are acceptable because they are useful for humanity. But far not all marketing stories are useful – mostly they are simply misleading for individuals and can be (are) disastrous for the whole economy (and the whole world if we see in on a larger scale).
I believe that the world (incl. financial) crisis is rooted also from the fact that there is too much storytelling instead of genuine stuff. And as the world changes right now very rapidly, the crisis is not gone, it is just coming, perhaps it is the right time to feed new generation of marketers (and other people who read your books) who will succeed in crisis era and will make the world better? Or do you really believe that storytelling aimed at short-term marketing success is the future and the way out of the coming crisis that is born partly because of (or with help of) storytelling?
And again, thank you for your interesting books that describe the things that really work.
By the way, here is a series of discussions about Seth Godin’s book “All marketers are liars”.
