Storytelling and Lying

Just received my copy of Seth Godin's new book, All Marketers are Liars, today and am excited to read it. The front flap has a great preview of what I expect the book will expand on: "Successful marketers don't talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe."

Seth's last post on his "Liar's Blog" qualifies the above statement with the reminder that the story one tells must be authentic.

I'm especially interested in gleaning some learnings that will translate to media relations, which at its most effective is the sharing of a story. Too often, we, the PR story-pushers, forget the real tale and focus too much on the features. We side with convenience and time and SPAM media contacts instead of telling them a story. We throw morsels of "Breaking" info instead of taking the time to build the background and grow the story those for-immediate-release features and benefits are birthed out of.