Prologue
This is the third of a four part series on the awkward situations that brands encounter. The new digital marketing environment creates multiple problems and challenges for today’s marketers – some of which are self-inflicted. The use of folkloric metaphors -a deep and abiding reservoir- helps define such situations in readily identifiable ways.
The tale can be summarized as: poor Miller boasts to King of daughter’s money-making spinning prowess whereupon she ascends social ladder while delegating actual task to dwarf-with-silly-name. It is tempting to regard Rumpelstiltskin as the villain (portrayed as short and ugly and demanding of her first born) but he is guilty of no deceit and works to help the unfortunate girl. It is her father, the Miller, who exaggerates so massively that she is bounced into an arranged marriage with aforementioned monarch for monetary gain. Dad’s misrepresentations set off the events that nearly end in daughter’s execution (“if by dawn tomorrow you have not spun this straw to gold you shall die”) and loss of her firstborn.
Although hard to measure the incidence (“Are you lying now…. Are you fibbing yet…?”) it’s estimated we lapse 3 or 4 times a day. Indeed, there is a whole thesaurus demarcating the difference between the different degrees. The spectrum runs from exaggeration to falsification and from there to perjury (“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour”) and perfidy.
The purpose of this piece is to note how often companies ‘fib’ in their marketing and how hardened to it we’ve become. From the ‘flatten your abdomen’ fitness product that can’t or won’t; via the automotive ‘scratch remover’ that doesn’t; to the GMO ‘farm fresh’ produce that isn’t we are surrounded by companies conjuring great wonders, the better to deceive.
This week, I spent an hour on the phone to a certain utility while shuttled from one department to another. During the interminable periods on hold I am obliged to listen to a recorded message telling me that my call is supremely valuable to them and regaled with tales of their excellent customer service. You’ve been there. They are spinning a line; passing off straw as gold.
As a customer, one’s options were limited. One could write a letter of complaint; threaten to move one’s business or simply huff and puff. Now social media allows us to air our grievances online and shame companies into getting their act together.
The BBC recently quoted from a survey of 2,000 showing that more than 1/3 of people in the UK have used social media to discuss companies and most said that ‘going public’ produced a better result than contacting their call centre. Companies can be held accountable and marketers who try to tell ‘a porky pie’ – Cockney rhyming slang for a lie – can be ostracized.
