Did you hear that President Trump is signing an executive order to change the National Bird from the Bald Eagle to the Roadrunner? He is a NY Giants football fan and greatly dislikes their archrival, the Philadelphia Eagles. It is also reported that his favorite cartoon growing up as a child was the Looney Tunes Roadrunner Show. This is set to happen in the Lavender Room at the White House on Saturday, April 1.

You may have figured out by the last sentence of the previous paragraph that April Fool’s Day is just two days away. There is no executive order to trade the Bald Eagle for the Roadrunner as a symbol of our nation. For all of the colored rooms in the White House, there is not a Lavender Room. I have no idea if Donald Trump has ever watched Looney Tunes cartoons or if he has any feelings one way or the other about the Philadelphia Eagles. However, I do know that he has shined a very bright light on what he has referred to as "fake news” that makes the fun-and-games of April Fool’s Day seem like normal, everyday information. There was a time when that kind of quasi-news was left to the tabloids lining the checkout aisles at grocery stores. Today, they fill the internet.

If you are in charge of marketing communications for your company, pay close attention to what is happening with fake news. There is a push back against anything that smacks of being tainted by opinion or is not 100% accurate. If you are writing and posting information for your company, there are some safeguards you can employ as disciplines in your writing style that will help you.

Verify your facts before publishing

There was a time when news sources employed the journalistic rule of getting two reliable sources to corroborate a fact before publishing it. This sort of verification has been tossed out the window in lieu of getting the information published quickly. Speed in communications has become the standard. Even in large news organizations, facts are often wrong and very biased. Make sure you are getting at least two unrelated sources to confirm your facts. Here is an axiom for communications professionals: It is better to be slow and right than fast and wrong.

It must be true, I read it on the internet

The internet, and social media in particular, have been a great forum for anyone wanting to express their opinions. If you are a First Amendment/Freedom of Speech stumper, you have to love social media. However, opinion often does not equate to the truth. If you want to guard against bad or misleading information, check out the facts you are finding on the internet with a source like Snopes.com or FactChecker.com. There are just too many viral lies circulating out there.

Spinning the vernacular

In all your marketing communications, you want to put your product or service’s best foot forward. That’s what marketing does. In strategic marketing, we put a lot of effort into writing the most suitable words that will stick in the minds of our customers. Some of those words have become so overused (the best value… the lowest price… exceeding customers’ expectations… the highest quality…) that they lose their meaning. Marketers throw those terms around like they are playing catch with their dog in the backyard. They toss the phrase and they expect the customer to pick them up and bring them back without any questions about their validity. But in this cycle of exposing "fake news,” expect customers to take a look at your advertising claims and make you back it up.

Here lies the marketing challenge: are you making claims that you may not be able to deliver? If so, change your marketing message. Rewrite your tagline. Refocus your campaigns. The villagers are at the gates with pitchforks and torches. Don’t think they will stop with just fake news sources. They will also set fire any false claim you make. Make sure you are promoting your products’ best features, but make sure you are not shading the truth either.

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Roadrunner photo source: Jessie Eastland