Lying Is Not Good Marketing
May 13, 2014 Industry News, Integrity and Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Advertising Analytics
The future of your brand – whether your marketing is online, offline, DR, branding, whatever – the survival of it depends on one key thing.
It is not big data or better metrics. It is not futuristic ad formats. It is not social media.
It is resisting the temptation to mislead people to make money. In other words, not lying.
Marketing and Lying: Not The Same Thing
The Ad Business press has been recommending something like this, but using the word “authenticity”. This sounds too much like Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”, or like George Burns when he said, “Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
The fact of the matter is that, while the absolute truth is not determinable in any way that satisfies philosophers, sane people know when they are lying. That is why they work so hard at legitimizing their lies, substituting the idea of the legally permissible for the facts as they know them to be. In marketing, that ultimately results in: bad customer experiences, consumer cynicism, dissatisfied customers, jaded employees, and bad long-term business results. Lying is a short-term ploy to boost sales that ultimately kills sales by debasing your brand.
What alternatives are there to misleading offers, irrelevant images, and fast-talking copy?
How about:
1. What you could do to make your product better.
2. What you could do to make your customer experience better.
3. What you could do make your value proposition unbeatable.
4. What you could do to build customer loyalty.