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Seth Godin provided a short video presentation recently at the GEL 2005 conference:

“Oh, hi! I want to talk to you today about lying. Let’s go for drive.

“So here we are on our field trip to Stu Leonard’s. Stu Leonard’s grocery store chain has only three outlets: two in Connecticut, one in New York - Yonkers, New York – and it’s mammoth. Stu makes millions and millions and millions of dollars a year by telling a story. A story about size. About lobsters.[image of large plastic lobster] A story about customer service; story about always looking at people when they come. A story that the New York Times bought hook line and sinker. People go there cause it’s an adventure. They go there cause they see piles and piles of stuff. The stuff they’re buying isn’t necessarily cheaper but it makes them feel like it is. They like buying stuff in giant bottles and giant cases because they feel like they’re getting a bargain. One of my favorite parts is the bagel section. Same bagels as anywhere else except they’re piled up just like in New York. The cakes and pastries, huge piles, huge, huge piles.

“My favorite story is the fish story. Fish when it was packaged like goods at any supermarket wasn’t selling. So, Stu had a great idea: He put it out on display, same fish, different lie. Sales skyrocketed - people got the story. Or how about the cows, and the robots, the kids love it. It’s part of the story of the store. How about the sushi bar? Would the sushi taste better if the chef was Japanese? And on your way out, is the 'What do you like? What don’t you like?' sign. Stu makes a very big point of this, accepting all the contributions that people want to give: all the suggestions about how to make that store better and better. He doesn’t write back all the time, but it’s the story about listening that matters so much.

“Enough about Stu. Let’s talk about cars. How much would this car be worth if it were really a Cobra? You can buy a perfectly good replica for over $60,000, but the real one costs $300,000. If it’s real, what makes it better? Jackson Pollock understood the same thing. A Jackson Pollock copy isn’t worth anything at all. The real one is worth a fortune. Why? What’s the difference? It’s because of the story of lie we can tell ourselves about uniqueness and rarity. Or it’s as simple as this menu at a coffee shop. Because it’s handwritten, the food seems better. Or the security sign. It doesn’t increase the security in a building; it increases the way we feel about the security. It’s not there to scare away the bad guy; it’s there to make the good guy feel better. Or Maria’s cleaning service. Where you notice the sign, you see that she doesn’t know how to spell. I think that makes it better from the point of view of the people that’d maybe hire her.”

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In his forthcoming book All Marketers Are Liars, Godin makes the case that modern marketing has had to evolve into narrative in order to maintain consumer interest. Stories frame a product in a context so that you can sell yourself on your worldview. Take Ben and Jerry’s ice cream which spends a great deal of time educating us that they use real ingredients and how great the company is, so that you don’t stop to think: “Ben and Jerry’s is selling us on obesity.”

One example Godin uses is of the Riedel crystal company. Georg Riedel helped pull his company out of near oblivion in the late 1970s, transforming it into a thirty million dollar a year business, by making wine and cordial glassware. Their story convinced wine drinkers that unique shapes in glasses delivered the beverage to the right part of the palate with the right amount of “nose.”

Godin continues: “And Yet when the proper tests are done specifically double-blind tests that eliminate any chance that the subject would know the shape of the glass, there is absolutely zero detectable difference between glasses. A $1 glass and a $20 glass deliver precisely the same impact on the wine: none.

“So what’s going on? Why do wine experts insist that the wine tastes better in Riedel glass at the same time that scientists can easily prove it doesn’t? The flaw in the experiment, as outlined by Daniel Zwerdling in Gourmet magazine, is that the reason the wine tastes better is that people believe it should. This makes sense, of course. Taste is subjective. If you think the pancakes at the IHOP taste better, then they do. Because you want them to.”

I should note here that I own a number of Riedel glasses. Twenty dollars, Seth? You got a great deal. There is a significant flaw in this type of thinking, and it’s something that I’ve generally found with advertisers and designers that spend a lot of time on mass-produced goods and not enough time on contemplation and connoisseurship.

If you’re talking about Big Macs produced in Prague rather than midtown New York, then there’s little room for any salient discussion save for some economic decisions and environment. McDonald’s isn’t fine dining.

Riedel is big business in their mass produced items, yet those items are prohibitively priced. Even more, their hand-blown Sommelier series is distinctly different from the rest of the line. Thin stems and delicate bowls don’t tell a story, they create an experience. That delivery in addition to the luck of the vintner and the company you’re keeping creates your story. Riedel’s marketing department is not on the menu when you are enjoying a candlelit meal. So, for you, there is significant difference between Riedel and say a six-ounce juice glass.

Similarly, some people make the argument that your mp3 player with the right headphones recreates the entire audio range that the human ear can perceive. As defined as an auditory experience, that is likely a true statement. However, music's story has only been solely an auditory experience for the last century and some would insist with depreciating returns. Anyone who has dressed for the opera, watched an extraordinary Philharmonic perform, or enjoyed a jam session at the park knows that “performance” and context are as much a part of the listening experience as grass stains on your pants or the low bass range of a cello that you feel rather than hear.

So when Godin says above: “A Jackson Pollock copy isn’t worth anything at all. The real one is worth a fortune. Why? What’s the difference? It’s because of the story of lie we can tell ourselves about uniqueness and rarity,” he does us a disservice by conflating fine art with mass marketing. There is no lie here about uniqueness and rarity. For multi-multi-million dollar businesses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses, bidding is about competitive consumption. Ownership of the “unique and rare” is what is behind the $100 million purchase of a Picasso.

Who is to blame? Certainly with every purchasing dollar we are complicit in the lie but not solely and exclusively. When Godin makes an argument that conjoins mass production with individuation, he diminishes rarity and excellence. By reducing a Jackson Pollock to just some paint on a canvas, though not an erroneous statement, Godin illustrates that advertising still has a long way to go toward appreciating an authentic experience, instead of simply mimicking one. They’re getting closer. It’s on the tips of their tongues; their forked tongues.