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.