It’s that awful, dreaded feeling of being found out. When you least suspect it, you’re suddenly called out publicly for your sins. Blindsided with guilt. People are staring. You feared this day was coming. Now what?
Several years ago a Toronto customs agent asked why I’d come to their fair city. I innocently responded “marketing.” The agent looked horrified. I might as well have said I’d come to murder puppies in their sleep. She made me step aside. Spitting her words like bullets, she demanded I explain exactly what kind of marketing I was up to. Oh yes, she said “up to.” A phrase fit for high jinks, shenanigans, cons and the like. People were staring.
When I joined my Canadian coworkers for dinner later they laughed and apologized for not warning me. Canada sees US marketing as exploitative. They have a “no tolerance” policy for US marketing. They guard their borders against it.
The nature of American marketing
I’m not anti-marketing, but I do think US marketing has gone astray. Reform is needed. Imagine a respectful way of messaging instead of the hyperbole that confronts us. I have had clients, who, being sensitive to “buzzy” marketing are more concerned about sounding like a come-on than actually being one. It’s as if the very nature of advertising means getting away with being cheesy — slipping it by the audience — because there’s no other way. Even the cleverest of ads has that slicked-back feel. Yet the American public tolerates it. Are we all so jaded that this type of marketing is inevitable?
Every minute, really?
So what drives American business? Is it: “What’s the quickest, cheapest way to get what I want from people?” I can almost hear Phineas Taylor Barnum whispering advice: “Well, let’s see, scaring them usually works! Give them a rush of emotion!” At least P. T. Barnum was clear about his motives: “I am a showman by profession ... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me”(1). A brief bio of Barnum is featured in a book which came out in 1870 by publisher Nelson Chesman(2). This post-Civil War piece was the newspaper industry’s attempt to encourage print advertising. I was drawn to a statement made in the preface of the book:
Yet of all the influences to make known the existence of one man to another, with his aims and views, the advertisement is the most potent.
Wow. So, not a treatise, not an essay, not an editorial, not even a heart-felt, penned letter, or even the Upanishads, but an advertisement is how to plumb the depths of another’s soul? Chesman made this statement when our country was coming out of a devastating war with a fatality rate — underestimated — of 620,000. The Civil War divided us so sharply that the United States of America was no longer united. We didn’t know ourselves as a nation. We didn’t know ourselves as a people.
Advertising hubris
I’m not saying I agree or disagree with Chesman’s assessment of human interaction. Rather, his statement reveals the hubris of modern advertising. Taken literally, I can imagine a Madison Avenue ad executive attending an elegant Midtown cocktail party. He confronts fellow guests with the inevitability of their failing health. The specifics of their impending infirmity depends on the drug his firm is representing. He urges them to run — don’t walk — to their physician and tell their doctor to prescribe fill-in-the-blank medication. The ad exec makes his message palatable by being upbeat and humming a bouncy, catchy tune, popular in years past. To help the guests remember, he has cleverly altered the lyrics to include the name of the drug in the chorus.
Per the Chesman book, this approach is one “...whose advertisements have a truly rhythmical and rhetorical ring, such as people like, and by which they are mostly influenced.”(2) Chesman extols these types of ads as being the most successful in getting people to do what you want. A bouncy matter-of-fact threat with a jig. But I suppose the ad exec doesn’t need to boast his client’s drugs at parties. His firm has crafted TV ads that continually blast the general public. Try watching TV without enduring one of these ads.
Chesman analyzes a similar technique for crafting an ad:
‘They made her a grave too cold and damp for a soul so honest and true.’ and then informed that ‘If they had been wise the dire necessity of opening the grave for one so lovely might have been averted, since Plantation Bitters, if timely used, are sure to rescue the young and lovely, the middle-aged, and the ailing from confirmed sickness.’ The first two lines insure the reading of the whole article, and the following paragraph is more certainly remembered from its connection with what precedes.
A recipe for emotional manipulation
First, shock your audience. Once you have their attention, reassure them you have what can save them. The only difference is that current TV ads focus on improved quality of life. The implication of the cold, damp grave loiters menacingly in the background. Otherwise, the messages are the same. They involve a calculated message cleverly constructed to control or influence another person toward a desired, specific outcome — which, by the way, is one definition of the word “manipulate.”
Merriam Webster defines the word “advertise” as “to call public attention to especially by emphasizing desirable qualities so as to arouse a desire to buy or patronize.”
An advertising hint in the Chesman book suggests the newspaper industry does have a distaste for exaggerated claims:
Editorial Puffing —The system of puffing has grown to such an extent that it has become offensive to all sensible people. When the people find the editorial columns of a newspaper full of puffs they may safely calculate that the paper is weak in circulation and pocket. If business men desire to make known to the public that they have goods for sale, let them advertise them in a proper way. But this editorial puffing is an imposition upon the public. — Boston Herald
I couldn’t agree more. But to what end did the Boston Herald’s advice influence advertisers? “Guerrilla Marketing” is a style of publicity seeking that became popular in the mid-1980’s. It has been touted as the go-to strategy for small startup businesses with low advertising budgets. The name was taken from a book by Jay Conrad Levinson. One guerrilla tactic is to leverage the authority of a newspaper by having an article written about your product or service. In contrast to expensive print advertising, this approach is free. Better still, the product or service is elevated to the status of being newsworthy.
This same tactic appears today on television. Local news stations will sometimes dedicate a portion of their broadcast to presenting a product or procedure. Offered as an "evaluation," in order to deem it newsworthy, this can serve as an announcement to call public attention to the product, especially by emphasizing desirable qualities so as to arouse a desire to buy or patronize. It appears on broadcast news delivered by news anchors so that means it’s not an advertisement — or is it?
Where are runaway advertising claims taking us?
Where does our government weigh in on protecting the American marketplace from less than honest advertising? The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defined puffery as a “term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected (italics added) of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined.”(3) Admittedly, the FTC expects advertisers to lie, or at least, exaggerate the claims they make about their product. So I guess gilding the lily is considered reasonable here. It’s the American way. No wonder that Canadian agent took an instant dislike to me.
The FTC stated in 1983 that puffery does not warrant enforcement action by the Commission. In its FTC Policy Statement on Deception: “The Commission generally will not pursue cases involving obviously exaggerated or puffing representations, i.e., those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously.”(4) So the consumer must practice caveat emptor, that is, let the buyer beware.
But when health and well-being are at stake?
But what if the consumer is misled about something as life-affecting as medication? When the wonder drug actually causes harm, what then? Don’t bother with the FTC, it’s time to call an attorney. Judging by the number of attorney ads aimed at people who’ve been injured by a medically prescribed drug, this is not unusual.
Let's call the whole thing off
I would like to know who the FTC considers to be an “ordinary consumer.” Is it the same folk the Boston Herald considers “sensible people?” I think these phrases are used to shame us into not assertively addressing the issue. Does it mean that if you fall for a false claim you surrender your right to being considered sensible and ordinary? If you complain are you calling yourself out to be a fool? So I guess it’s no one’s fault but your own, is that it? I don’t think so. I have hope for a better way.
What would a better way look like?
I want to tell the public I have a product I think they’ll like. I want their attention so we can connect over time, not just in order to take something from them in the point-of-sale moment. I want to know what they like and dislike about my product, my advertising, my company.
My interest doesn’t end with just getting them to buy it. I have created something that will improve their life experience. In order to be successful as a company, I charge a price that is reasonable and that the market can bear. People give me money because the exchange works for them. They buy because they need what I’m offering — not because they are being manipulated.
Isn't point-of-sale the point?
It’s about more than just money. Buying my product means clients are investing in my product through our connection — possible via social media. This is commerce as true give-and-take. The people using the product become the momentum of the product’s life. I depend on them for validating the product. Their validation helps it grow. They depend on me for the product to live up to their needs. They also need it to be available at a reasonable cost.
The commercial exchange is put to the service of the social fabric it supports. From this interaction, a relationship grows. As the relationship extends to more customers, a community grows. The product might be teething rings, barbecue grills, bicycles, razors — it doesn’t matter. Word of mouth is about relationship, not the artifice of celebrity endorsement. In fact, it’s the opposite of artifice. The person stakes their reputation on their endorsement. Authenticity reigns supreme in this model.
The good news is that "modern" marketing is on its way out. The wave of postmodern marketing is rolling in. Now is the time for consumers to take control. We have an opportunity to do better. Let’s allow the better angels of our nature to guide us.
Stock footage provided by Julien Tromeur, downloaded from www.videvo.net
Philip B. Kunhardt Jr.; Philip B. Kunhardt III; Peter W. Kunhardt. P. T. Barnum: America’s Greatest Showman. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1995.3. Better Living, Inc. et al., 54 F.T.C. 648 (1957), aff’d, 259 F.2d 271 (3rd Cir. 1958).
“The Men Who Advertise; An Account of Successful Advertisers, Together with Hints on the Method of Advertising.” George P. Rowell & Co., New York, N.Y., 1870
“The Power and Perils of Puffery,” Scott Berinato, Harvard Business Review, May 11, 2010
“FTC Policy Statement on Deception” (PDF). October 14, 1983.
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