Sh*tty marketing lies and radical transparency
Ah, nothing like good old poo humour to laugh out the week, and the financial year!
AngryAussie’s post: alli: Miracle diet pill with teeny-tiny side effect is a very funny read and obviously struck a cord with many - 322 comments to date!
It is a great (and rather extreme) example of how marketing as a profession has devolved to the point of literally spinning sh*t. Many of us put up with real estate agents calling a “run down hovel unfit for human occupation” a “renovator’s delight” - but where does it stop? When does “putting it in a nicer way” turn into the creation of outright and dangerous lies?
My friend Stil and I have been talking about the idea of radical transparency in the way we do business. The basis is that generally keeping secrets is bad and tends to do more harm than good to relationships. And where there is no harm, people should be told or given access to as much information as possible. That way they are empowered to make better decisions and take real actions.
This sort of marketing creates false and misleading information. Such feel-good distorted pseudo-facts actually exploit various innate human communication traits to effectively mislead without telling outright lies.
7 comments on “Sh*tty marketing lies and radical transparency”
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[…] Zern is concerned about the lack of transparency in marketing - and references AngryAussie’s now famous post on marketing the “miracle” weightloss drug alli. […]
Zern, I’m so pleased the “radical transparency” meme has struck a chord. And yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, because of a personal connection and because it’s at the core of why a project I’m working on is driving me mad.
The most annoying thing for me is “petty secrecy”. Keeping things hidden when there’s really nothing to hide — and when it actually degrades the end product.
An example is not showing the client a proposed design for their website until that design has been discussed internally and can be presented as a polished “proposal” with unanimous opinion behind it. By the time you do that, everything is so slick and “finished” that they only make comments about the small details.
If you let them see everything — even the rough sketches at the beginning and the team’s raw comments as the design evolves, they’ll have a better understanding of the process and the reasons behind your design decisions. They might just spot a major problem and tell you before it’s too late.
And, when they see the same interactive process deal with their comments and produce the next design revision, they’ll see that it actually takes work. They won’t think “You’re charging me another $1500 just to make a few changes to a picture!”
I simply don’t understand what is obviously a very great fear of exposing the reality of the production process.
Hmmm… This has triggered the need to write an essay about this. I’ll link to it here when it’s done.
Looking forward to the essay Stil!
[…] last but certainly not least, Zern Liew’s take on the marketing of scary weightloss drugs and transparency in […]
[…] is a lot of talk at the moment around radical transparency in business-to-customer and business-to-employee relationships. Is there a need for wider radical transparency in everyday […]
[…] Liew has a social conscience. He argues against falsehood in marketing, thoughtless mass production, and poor industrial design. I haven’t asked him specifically, […]
[…] Liew has a social conscience. He argues against falsehood in marketing, thoughtless mass production, and poor industrial design. I haven’t asked him specifically, […]