The Devil's Advocate

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Learn from the Wizard of Oz

You need to play straight with your customers if you’re to build a lasting relationship. But that doesn’t mean you can’t sometimes use of a little bit of smoke and mirrors.

The reason for this is that customers often don’t want the best. They want the least worst. They’re fearful about taking a risky decision, even if they know it’s a good offer. And as IBM played up in their old adverts, ‘No one ever got fired for buying IBM’. IBM’s labs even researched exhaustively into the exact shade of blue for their logo that would most reassure customers.

So while not being dishonest, we all have to strive to be someone before we actually become them.

In the early days of my marketing agency, we were pitching for a big ...