Knights and knaves

Once upon a time, there was a village. And it was a happy village: one that got its thrills clapping in unison. But then, something happened. A ruffle ran through it, and everyone turned into either a knight or a knave. A knight was someone who'd always speak the truth, and a knave someone who'd always lie. So they'd heard. Now, knights and knaves alike were sure of two things""their own knighthood and the others' knavery. So it was all rather confusing.

Until something even more remarkable happened. Marketers jumped into the act. Now, now, now, they said, their naivete on display, this is all too confusing for the fellow out there. "Knight" is too hard to recall. "Knave" is too hard to say. How about "nigh" and "nae" instead? Or better still, "nai" and "nay"? And suddenly, a silent K was not all they had in common. And they all looked at each other, hugged in joy and got back to clapping. Visible or invisible, it sounded thunderous all the same. And everyone lived happily ever after.

The moral of the story is relativist: marketers and hypnotists are close cousins. But are they knights or knaves? Seth Godin seems to have his mind made up in his latest book, All Marketers Are Liars.

Is that what Godin is saying? Well, the man certainly has a reputation for books of such single-minded simplicity that you wonder why they don't do away with the printed pages between the jacket flaps. Get consumer consent, he says in one book. Turn your ideas infectious, he says in another. And differentiate or disappear, he says in yet another. This, though, is "a book about the psychology of satisfaction", declares Godin, a few pages after his opening promise: "I have no intention of telling you the truth."

Godin would rather tell a story. Even if you haven't read Blink, his obvious inspiration for this book, you'd have guessed by now that this is just Act I: the seduction. The verbal acrobatics occur later, but you needn't reach the climactic Act to realise you "can't get no satisfaction" from All Marketers.

"I wasn't being completely truthful... marketers aren't liars," Godin back-flips, "They're just storytellers." Aha. But then, this: "It's the consumers who're liars." Why? They lie to themselves. They want their brand to spin them a fantasy. Why, even businesses "like to believe that efficient, useful, cost-effective products and services are the way to succeed", in spite of all the telltale signs that telling a tale is what counts""so long as it's "authentic" (by way of consistency) and your very own ("You cannot succeed if you try to tell your competition's story better").

Godin is no ordinary storyteller himself. A frog would starve with flies lying all around it, he says, but can flick a mean tongue out to catch a hyperactive wingflapper, razor focused as it is on detecting change""for survival. In that, the human mind is no different... and he throws in some survival-edge words from Harvard professor Edward Glaeser too. Nice.

Yet, the book isn't without its knavery ""in suggesting, for instance, that trying to change the consumer's "worldview" is the silliest of all strategies. It is not. In fact, if marketers have any hypnotic power, it's on account of their belief that the truth alone is persuasive. It just has to be well told.

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ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS
THE POWER OF TELLING AUTHENTIC STORIES IN A LOW-TRUST WORLD

Seth Godin
Penguin
Price: £9.10; Pages: 186