All Marketers are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works--and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All

Successful marketers are just the providers of stories that consumers choose to believe.

prostitute=commercial sex worker nonbelievers=the unchurched lying on a job application=résumé enhancement police clubs=batons porn star=adult entertainer room service=private dining nightclub=party space fat lady=big woman committee=task force maid=room attendant

This is why permission marketing is so effective—you reach people who have a worldview that the messages you promise to send them are a valuable part of their lives.

These superstitious iPod owners, though, had made a decision about what their player liked (and what it didn’t like). They gave the machine a personality.

Worldview is the term I use to refer to the rules, values, beliefs and biases that an individual consumer brings to a situation.

Make your story bigger and bigger until it’s important enough to believe.

The pieces of the story come together in an instant and the story is told. If the story is confusing or contradictory or impossible, the consumer panics and ignores it.

The desire to do what the people we admire are doing is the glue that keeps our society together. It’s the secret ingredient in every successful marketing venture as well.

Kiehl’s customers are measuring the price paid compared to the experience of purchasing and the way that using the product makes them feel,