Pretty much every book on marketing and advertising has an injunction to always be honest and ethical. And in pretty much every book, this comes across as mere lip service. This is manifestly not the case in PRIMAL STORYTELLING (Marketing for Humans) by Anthony L. Butler. Whereas other marketing experts hardly ever offer a rationale for creating content that is ethical and honest, Butler says this is central to effective marketing because you must build trust to create customers and clients. His thesis is solidly based on human psychology: we are storytelling animals and, because this is how our brains are wired, the most effective marketing strategies must use stories. (Ironically enough, Butler, who is a military veteran, early in the book fails to tell the story of how he got into copywriting, saying only that he was not qualified for anything, found himself in a financial hole, so he started some companies.)
Butler argues that most marketing content nowadays fails because copywriters and other content creators are focused on following algorithms, catering to SEO (search engine optimization) while forgetting that all content must appeal to actual human beings. The same is true of Business-to-Business (B2B) copy, which is typically aimed at titles (Chief Financial Officer, for example) rather than the person who occupies that role. His criticism of clickbait, which is used by most websites nowadays, is especially telling. He points out that, while such headlines do get the user to click, if the content is disappointing, the blow-back will damage the brand.
In addition to offering a different paradigm to create marketing content and campaigns, however, Butler also provides key templates and concepts for doing so. His 230-page book is divided into nine chapters that include Primal Emotions, Brand Stories, and case studies of Primal Storytelling in Action. Again, this is where other books on marketing often fall short because their authors, understandably, don’t want to give away their best secrets. But Butler has no problem doing so because, even knowing his secrets, creativity and skills and hard work are still the drivers of great marketing content. There are, in other words, no shortcuts. And, if most marketers start using Butler’s approach, people will certainly have less boring and useless content to contend with.
With thousands of marketing books out there, it’s unusual to find anyone with anything original to say on the topic, but Anthony L. Butler’s PRIMAL STORYTELLING (Marketing for Humans) convincingly pushes back against conventional wisdom and the latest trends to present a thesis that is solidly based on human psychology: the most effective marketing strategies must use stories.
~Kevin Baldeosingh for IndieReader