Unfortunately, marketing is sometimes guilty of playing the Liar’s Club with consumers. Watchdog groups, such as the Better Business Bureau and Angie’s List, have made a living off of alerting the public to the truth-tellers and the liars in business. It is to the point that an entire generation of adults have stopped believing anything they hear in traditional advertising and have gravitated towards a new media forum (the opinions of their social networking friends) in determining who they will do business with and who will be shunned as a marketing liar. (See our previous article Millennial Marketing Quest: Facebook or Twitter? Are we asking the wrong question?) 

There are all kinds of people and industries that have been tainted by the marketing lies they tell. There is a stigma attached to car sales, home repairs, hospitals, insurance, financial lending, politicians, news reporting agencies, etc. Large corporations and small; the list goes on and on. Does integrity in marketing really matter anymore? The answer, of course, is yes it does. If you make a claim in the advertising of your products or services, you need to be able to back it up. There are two big reasons you should take note of this. First of all, there is the opinion of your target market that will determine whether or not they will continue to buy from you. If it goes public that you have been lying to your customers, they will put you out of business in a heartbeat. Remember Arthur Andersen? They were one of the five largest accounting firms in the world until they were accused of hiding information (and later, shredding it) in an audit of Enron just prior to the energy giant’s collapse. In the wake of all of this, Arthur Andersen’s clients found other accounting vendors. Today truth in marketing is even more critical than it was a decade ago when the Andersen/Enron scandal made headlines. The speed at which this kind of information makes news now is immediate due to social networking. It does not matter if the consumer has all of the facts straight (in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the obstruction of justice conviction against Arthur Andersen in 2005 – too late to change the opinion of the consumer.) If you bilk your clients through your marketing, or they simply think you are cheating them, they have great power in their opinions expressed on your corporate Facebook page, on Twitter, or a whole host of other electronic media. It all happens in the blink of an electron.

The second reason you want to make sure you are truthful in your marketing is lying in advertising is illegal. The last thing any business needs is a legal charge of false advertising. Standing in a courtroom defending a carelessly written ad is not my idea of a good day. Make sure what you are saying about your products and services can and will  be delivered by your company. This goes beyond just your advertising. Marketing is larger than just advertising. What do you say about your company on your web site? How are your sales staff presenting your business products and services? In many industries, there are compliance hoops to jump through with your marketing pieces. But even with the legal department writing miles of disclaimers, you could still slip up if you cannot deliver what you claim to produce or your product is defective.

Here are a couple of rules of thumb when putting together a marketing message.

1. Is the language intriguing, inviting and creative, yet completely honest about your business? Don’t let the legal department drain the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, but don’t cross the line of "too good to be true” either.

2. There are many times when a visionary in a business has a dream of what a product can be. (see our article Your customers: Bears, Lions or Eagles?)  The problem comes when a visionary wants to go ahead and market a product before it has a chance to attain his vision. There is great danger in doing so. So many times in the development of a product or a service, things change along the way. The market shifts in another direction and refinement is needed. The end product may have no resemblance to the first vision. Don’t get the cart in front of the horse. It is better to develop the product or service first and then market it.