Seth Godin is on tour to promote his book All Marketers are Liars. The concept of the book is that marketers are good at telling stories that customers want to believe, but not necessarily are true. Here’s a comment from Godin on the What’s Your Brand Mantra blog about storytelling in the car industry:
If I ran GM, I’d figure out how to make the cars MORE different. Why doesn’t the Saab have Swedish words on the non-essential controls? Why doesn’t the Cadillac come with a better version of Onstar? Dollar for dollar, consumers spend more money on ridiculous stories for cars than anything else we buy. GM needs to learn before it’s too late that they are NOT in the assembly line business. They are in the business of telling stories.