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I had a cutout from a magazine taped to an old monitor for several years since I first went to business school. It’s something I used to look at a lot and when I was moving all my equipment into my new racks last week I again stumbled upon it. It goes, as follows:

Consumers fall for that little bit of truth that they recognize with and connect with.

While in b-school some of my favorite movies were Boiler Room, Wall Street, and Glengarry Glen Ross. These movies depicted a cuthroat business environment where a sale is a sale and nothing less is accepted. So when I saw this quote I immediately cut it out as it rang true to my hollywood sense of business. There are really two ways to look at it. In one way you can see it as selling a lie that rings true to the customer. In other words - make up a story the customer will connect with and then sell the story. If it’s the truth for the customer you are more likely to make the sale - even though the story is a lie. Marketing has operated with this philosophy for years.

The other way to look at it is if you tell your real story and it rings true to the customer they will recognize it and you have succeeded. You haven’t lied or made anything up - you are just telling your story. In this sense they aren’t falling for a lie, but the truth. In my hiatus I also got to finish ‘Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play‘ where you can find a related quote on ‘getting real’:

To be authentic; to be truthful; to say what you mean; to be congruent with what you value; to penetrate past lazy thinking, facades, games, defenses, fears, illusions; to get a core understanding; to get to the heart of the matter; to open your belief systems to examination; to increase your awareness of what is really going on, and your choices of how to respond.

If your customers can’t fall for that bit of truth than do you really want them as customers? They want the truth and authenticity - but they also want you to say what you mean. They don’t want to hear it if you don’t mean it. And, as Seth notes in ‘All Marketers are Liars‘, they will find out sooner or later…

“Everyone does it” is not an excuse that will stop this slide—it exacerbates it. Until marketers start to take responsibility for the stories we tell and the promises we make, consumers will get increasingly more skeptical and suspicious—and all marketers will lose.

As the landscape of business changes through the advancements and adoption of new media truth will inevitably win. If you are not telling the truth or telling an exaggerated story you will be called out. Your message is conveyed not only through you but your customers and your audience. If you are telling a true story you will find the customers that are right for you.

Manage your edge. Stay transparent. Tell a true story.

UPDATE: I did some research on the quote I had taped to my monitor because, as a good blogger should, I wanted to reference the source. It turns out it is from Kathleen Calligan, CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Middle Tennessee. The quote is an excpert from an article by Joellen Perry on 06/16/03 called ‘Ripped off the headlines‘ for U.S. News & World Report (of which I used to subscribe).

Tags: Quotes, Business, ManagingTheEdge, Truth, Marketing

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