Marketing Trend – Authentic Stories

This is marketing trend #9 in a series of 14 marketing trends adapted from Seth Godin’s book Meatball Sundae. Previously in this series: Infinite Channels.

Authentic Stories

In the marketing days of old, businesses were easily able to tell us what they wanted us to hear using relatively few publication and broadcast sources. Generally, we believed the spin. We had little choice!

In the New Marketing, we hear many sides of the same story. The impact of a business’s advertising spin is falling dramatically because we have so many other sources to listen to. We can read blogs or forums where real customers are venting their true feelings. If something is worth buying you’ll hear about it from those who did; if not, you’ll hear warnings from those that were burned.

Conversational social media, like blogs and forums, are connecting the experiences of real customers to other potential customers. Social media is linking all the stories about a company and it’s products.

If an organisation or individual, say a politician or celebrity, is inconsistent with their story, we’re all going to hear about it. CCTV is everywhere. We all carry a mobile phone with a camera. Everybody gets caught some time. Be warned!

The most powerful marketing tool you have is to create an authentic story about who you are and to live it every day.

[Tweet “#marketingtrend #9 Authentic stories because they’re from multiple sources via @bookrapper”]

Source

This is from the Book Rapper issue Marketing How-Now that is derived from Seth Godin’s brilliant book Meatball Sundae.