Lies, Damn Lies,
and Marketing Liars

I’ve really enjoyed reading Seth Godin’s new book “All Marketers Are Liars” and his take on the marketing lies that help build brands and sell products — but what about the lies companies and industries tell themselves in order to ‘duck and cover’ (Talk about a lie! Duck-and-cover is going to save you from an atomic bomb?? Did anyone really believe this?) from serious competition and inevitable change?

The current ‘lie they tell themselves’ that is driving me up the wall is terrestrial radio’s self-deluding fantasy fable that satellite radio and podcasting is some passing fad that will not affect the way they program or do business. Their fal-back position seems to be — ‘people are saying radio is dead, but we’ll be around for a long time.’ Well, DUH. Of course you’ll be ‘around’ the question is what sort of shape will you be in?

AM radio survived FM, Hollywood’s summer blockbusters have survived video and DVD — but to what extent? You could buy an hour of time on some AM radio stations for the cost of a dinner out, and the biggest movie of the summer is being used to illustrate the dropping trend of movie attendance. Sure, AM radio is still alive, people still go to movies — but the way they do business (and the money they make doing it) has changed forever.

The sooner they stop lying to themselves, the sooner they can get to work on developing the new stories that will encourage consumers to buy-in to more modern ‘marketing lies.’

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