Seth Godin's “All Marketers are Liars” explains this process well. When people buy luxury ice cream, for example, they're not just buying a frozen confection with a certain kind of artificial coloring and flavoring. If they are, they're paying commodity prices for it at the mega-market.

People pay for the story. They want to know that it's Florentine gelato. They want to be served by a waiter with an Italian accent. They're not actually paying for the product; they're paying for the marketing.

Apple is of course the textbook example of this kind of marketing. When you look at their hardware specs, you know that you're paying far more for the components than you would through a similar PC. In the past, PCs used to be sold purely on performance numbers. I remember magazines used to have covers like “CHECK OUT THESE BLAZING FAST 333 MHZ PROCESSORS!”

Apple markets with stories. That's why their profit margins are exponentially higher relative to commodity hardware sellers.

Or take Air Jordan sneakers. The shoes are plastic foot-encasements with a logo slapped on them. But kids will pay hundreds for them because it's like becoming a part of the Michael Jordan mythos. It's not about the base physical matter; it's about interacting with a story.

Social media allows for mass interactive storytelling. People will work with you to build your brand – if you make the story enticing enough.

Inception illustrates core truths of psychology that are applicable beyond marketing. But because it's a movie about persuasion, marketers can learn a lot from it.

The stuff that we sell is best understood as a fetish – a symbolic token to stimulate the imagination, a social object that encourages new forms of interaction.