all marketers are liars

I'm reading Seth Godin's new book, All Marketers Are Liars. The first lie, he admits, is in the title.

All marketers are not liars, he says; all consumers are.

This may be his most challenging argument: That marketers tell a story and consumers (all of us) choose the part of the story we want to believe -- or maybe already believe -- and go with that whether it holds water or not.

If he's right about this -- and there's reason to think he is -- we may waste a lot of energy trying to convince people who've already made up their minds for us or against us.

I have to noodle on this some more.

Meanwhile I find myself thinking about what passes for evangelism in most church settings these days, which seems more like shuffling the deck than anything else.

Which reminds me of the first time I made media buys and was assured by a leading Christian magazine that my customers would find nothing to disagree with in their pages. I was 25 years old, give or take, and I remember recoiling from that line in the sales kit. "Then why publish!" I said out loud to nobody but me.

Now I know the answer to that pure, simple question:

For the money.

Excuse me; I think I'm gonna be sick. Again.