Early in my advertising career a teacher asked a class mixed with graphic designers, illustrators, ad students, etc. what they thought of advertising. A hipster chimed in that he felt advertising was misleading, and I’m paraphrasing, but evil for manipulating the masses.

The teacher fired back with the question, “You don’t think you’re smart enough to not be manipulated?” Since then, I’ve firmly believed that no marketer could profit in the long term from claims they can’t back up. If your product doesn’t deliver, your customer service sucks or I have a general bad experience, I’m not going to be a repeat customer.

Sure, you can get a few insecure men to buy the penis enhancement pill when the girl who blinks too much

tells you how revolutionary it is. But when nothing happens, they aren’t going to buy again, right? Right?

The other day I caught a clip of Jon Stewart as a guest of Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday

They got in a discussion of misinformation and political agendas. Jon followed this appearance up with a segment on his show citing cases of misinformation from Fox News.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m not political and don’t want to make this about liberal or conservative sides. I’m just looking at this from the perspective of a communicator delivering a message. About tone. About targets. And more importantly, about who we’re talking to and what they should hear vs want to hear.

If someone lies to you several times about what they are trying to sell you, wouldn’t you eventually lose faith?

To bring it back to advertising, this makes me ponder advertising briefs and strategy. This takes us into the planner’s realm, but I think it’s also something for creatives to think about. Where’s the line between communicating an image or tone you can back up vs telling the consumer what they want to hear? We always have to consider the insights of the customers and try to fill a need. And I think your product should be able back it up. I’m not going to be able to use sex and fun to sell a hemorrhoid cream. Beer, sure. Hemorrhoid cream, no.

But where’s the line between Male enhancement pills selling “enhancement” and Coke selling happiness? As I sit on my Corinthian Leather couch, I guess I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe this is something Santa Claus can answer? Maybe Criss Angel has the answer?

I think we must simply put this question in the answering queue behind whatever the proper answer is to, “Does this dress make me look fat?”

- Michael Palese