Should marketing tell the truth, or spin it?

When you open a Coke, are you opening happiness or a bottle of sugar water? Coke marketers work incredibly hard to convince you of the former, but reality says you’re drinking sugar.

Few, if any, mutual funds can consistently beat the market, but financial services marketers work incredibly hard to convey the impression that their portfolio managers are the best. Reality says most are about the same.

Traditionally, marketers have been paid to spin the facts so that prospective customers choose the products they represent. I’ve been in marketing for a long time, but even I can understand that “spin” can variously mean distort, exaggerate, or even deceive.

Heresy? Nope, just the facts.

But what happens now, when humanity itself is being turned into one big fact-checking operation? Social media and 24/7 access to information means a customer in a car dealership is no longer at the mercy of a sales manager who says he has the only Sky Blue convertible hybrid in the state, and that he’s selling it for $1,000 under his cost. (Reality: there are twelve, and his quoted price included $1,727 in profit.)

I’d like to suggest that marketing needs to own the truth. That is, it needs to be marketing’s responsibility to get the facts straight and to make these facts easy for any current or prospective customer to access.

The truth is going to come out anyway, and if the company reveals it then at least they will enjoy credibility. But more importantly, the truth will force marketers to find factual ways to attract customers. Some options include personalized services and smarter products. By the latter, I mean products that can sense their surroundings and thus better serve the customer.

I’m betting on the truth, and I hope you do, too.