Do you know a myth from the truth? Marketing is sometimes accused of misleading people into believing a myth about a brand.

You’ve probably heard of Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiment with electricity by flying a kite in a thunderstorm. In June 1752, Franklin and his son, William, decided they would try to prove that lightning was actually electricity. During a thunderstorm, Ben and William launched a kite that had a small wire attached to it to attract lightning … a lightning rod of sorts. He tied hemp string to the kite. Near the end of the string, he attached a metal key that was attached with a wire to a Leyden jar. He then tied the hemp string to a silk string. The hemp became wet when it started to rain, but the silk remained dry because Franklin held it inside a barn. The idea was for lightning to strike the kite, travel down the wet string to the key, which would then fill the Leyden jar with electricity. The dry silk string would resist the electrical charge and keep him and William safe. You have probably heard that the kite was struck by lightning. The Franklins found the key glowing in the light of the Leyden jar, where the high-powered charge was now being stored.

How much of that story is true? Did Franklin actually perform the experiment? It appears that he might have done so. Others were able to replicate his results, although one unfortunate fellow was electrocuted about a year later when lightning struck him. That leads to the part that is a myth: lightning did not strike the kite. If it did, Ben and William would have been fried. An average lightning bolt has around 300 million volts and 30,000 amps. That is about 4,000 times the amps used in executing accused felons in an electric chair. What happened was the wet string was electrically charged from the atmosphere. The strands of the twine began to stand on end the way static electricity makes our hair stand up. When Ben Franklin put his hand next to the key, he got a spark that shocked him. He did not discover electricity, as some have claimed, but he found that the atmospheric charges that caused lightning also traveled up and down his kite string to the key.

Now you might ask, why in the wide world of sports did someone as intelligent as Ben Franklin do something so stupid as to try to get a lightning bolt to strike the kite he was holding? The answer is he had a product to sell. Franklin was the inventor of the lightning rod. In order to sell them, he needed a convincing piece of marketing that let people know that lightning was electricity and electrical currents would be attracted to metal. Thus, if people heard about his experiment, and believed it, he could sell them lightning rods to save their homes and barns.

There are a lot of marketing methods that people claim will work to help you sell your brand. I often get calls from clients after they have talked to a sales rep who has tried to convince them that they should be advertising with their particular medium. (One of my favorites was the customer who said they were considering buying advertising space on shopping carts in the grocery store. If that worked, wouldn’t the grocery store place ads there?) Here is the truth about marketing: it works! It is essential to any business selling its products and services. Here is also the truth: not every marketing medium will work with your particular target market – the consumers you are trying to turn into customers.

How do you know what will work and what will not? First, know your customers very well. Study them and find out what mediums appeal to them. Second, see what mediums can offer you real results in businesses similar to yours. Just like a science experiment, good marketing should be replicated to prove its hypothesis. If there are no tangible results from other businesses in industries like yours, take a pass. Third, be skeptical of numbers that sound too good to be true. Effective marketing methods never get 100% participation. Effective marketing methods that get 1/3 participation are really good. If someone is touting numbers above that, you are probably dealing with a charlatan.

On the flip side, there are methods that will fit your customers and get you good results. Make sure you measure your results and compare your costs on marketing to what you are bringing in your door. Ben Franklin did that. The written accounts of his kite experiment earned him the attention of his target market. Dispel the myths and get to the essential marketing.

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Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Skypainting by Benjamin West 1816