So a guy walks into a a fashionable barbershop for a haircut. The barber is a cute young lass. She asks her client who is a wearing a suit and tie if he’s on his lunch break. The young man replies, “No, I was interviewing for a job.” The barberess follows up, “What sort of job are you interviewing for?” The young man says, “I am interviewing with AppliedTechno Corp for a programming position translating backend database protocols such as…these protocols…” STOP.

That is the truth. That’s all quite truthful as delivered [Ed. Please excuse the stereotyping] by someone with an engineering mindset. Lots of detail that doesn’t take into account the mindset of the receiver of the information. Factually correct, but not necessarily suitable for the audience, suitable for a clone of himself. He might feel as if leaving out some of this info was incorrect or it just might not occur to him to do so.

This exemplifies the difference between “telling the truth” which is something scientists and engineers often feel compelled and obligated to do and “marketing.” Individuals with an engineering mindset often think of there as being some epic battle between the truth and marketing: good vs. evil, straight men vs. spin doctors. This isn’s the case at all, at least with good engineers and marketers. I believe engineers and marketers would be better off and more productive if this misunderstanding were cleared up and technologists, scientists and engineers trusted marketers more and saw them less as “evil spindoctors trying to shove crap on an unwitting public” paraphrasing my Kellogg Prof. Julie Hennessy. (On the flip side, marketers also need to learn that engineers are not all socially awkward introverts who look like Bill Gates circa 1978.)

Marketing is not lying anymore than engineering is creating superhuman robots hellbent on taking over the earth. Marketing is telling a story in such a way that your audience can digest and appreciate it. Marketing is the man replying, “I am interviewing for an engineering position at a local startup.” This is truthful. It’s delivered in a concise way that the audience likely understands and appreciates. It’s also much more likely to incite follow up questions from the audience. The woman may have asked “What type of engineer?” or “Which startups?” or “What did you do before?” We call this a dialogue or engaging your audience.

As soon as you can get the brain of your audience to interact with your message, they are much more likely to be interested and remember it (and resultantly use, buy, etc.). She may have had a great conversation with the engineer and then established a relationship for future visits. Instead, she smiled and nodded awkwardly after his geeky sililoquy. They stopped speaking to each other after that.

PS- Who get’s their haircut after an interview. And, yes, this really just happened before me: State Street Barbers in River North, Chicago.