Three of the most ludicrous statements I have ever heard from one of my closest friends:
#1. When I encouraged him to exercise regularly, he said, “a human heart is only capable of beating so many times in a lifetime. When you exercise, you increase your heart rate, and it makes you live shorter.”
#2 Smoking makes you live longer. “My uncle lived 80 plus years and smoked for the most part. He died shortly after the doctor told him to quit.”
#3 Another one on smoking. “I smoke everyday, so my immune system works better than yours. You will get lung cancer from second hand smoking way before I do.”
That just shows the length people are willing to go to convince themselves the stuff which they want to believe.
Lesson to marketers: people buy stories, not facts. That’s why even though they appear so unreasonable and fake, stories of becoming rich overnight or losing 20 lbs of fat by not exercising are still intriguing to some people. They buy into tiny hope of getting something in return without a lot of effort, but keep ignoring the obvious fact of “if that’s the case, why isn’t everyone else doing it?”
Now should you go around and start scamming innocent people? No. But there are plenty of other stories you buy into. Things like, if you own an iPhone, you are cool; or if you graduated from Harvard, you must be a genius; or if he buys you jewelery from Tiffany’s, he must love you more. Unrelated facts somehow combine together to justify one’s actions. And there is nothing wrong with it.
Your job at marketing is to tell a story, whether you want to or not. Realizing that is step one. Step two is to come up with a story that’s compelling enough to generate some conversations among the audience.
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