Be a Better Liar

If you want to attract customers in an increasingly competitive world, it helps to tell tales about your products. Just make sure your lie is true.

I have no intention of telling you the truth. Instead I’m going to tell you a story. This is a story about why entrepreneurs must forsake any attempt to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and must instead focus on what people believe and then work to tell them stories that fit and enhance their worldview.

Make no mistake: This is not about tactics or hype or little things that might matter. This is a whole new way of doing business. It’s a fundamental shift in the paradigm of how ideas spread. Either you’re going to tell stories that spread, or you will become irrelevant.

In the beginning, there was the story. Before marketing, before shopping carts, and long before infomercials, people started telling stories to themselves and others. We noticed things. We noticed that the sun rose every morning, and we invented a story about Helios and his chariot. People got sick, and we made up stories about humors and bloodletting and we sent them to the barber to get well.

By Seth Godin

Full Story: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbusiness/marketing/articles/0,15114,1053410-1,00.html

(Thanks to John Masterson of http://www.modwest.com for passing this along. "I’ve lost 30 pounds and my hair has grown back since Modwest started hosting my web site" -Russ)