A Novel Approach to Marketing

Why would anyone expect to learn anything useful from reading classic literature?  

No one in their right mind would expect to have to navigate the traditions of the royal court in 18^th century Russia or have to survive the trials and tribulations of the debtors’ prisons in Dickensian London.  

Knowing how a whaling boat operates or what it was like to take a road trip with hipsters in the 50's or how it felt to be a slave in the American South will not help you prepare your presentation on social media for tomorrow’s webinar.

The truth is great literature is, by and large, about people.  It is about how people think and how they talk and interact with each other.  Great literature deals with human relationships, motivations, fears and ambitions.  

And great marketing is about developing and nurturing relationships.  I have learned more about relationships from novels than from how to books.  I have read more truth about the human condition in biographies and memoirs than in any journal article.

Pick up a novel sometime.  You might learn something!