Saturday Thought: Lies

Happy weekend!

And happy December.

Hope everyone’s cue fours have been going swimmingly.

Here’s today’s thought.

It’s about lying.

If you want to sponsor a truthful publication, venmo me @danny-weisman.

Onto to the thought…

Saturday Thought

Elon Musk told Bob Iger to go fuck himself this week.

Many people were offended.

Advertisers said it was unacceptable.

I found it…refreshing?

We work in an industry based on lies.

Literally - everywhere you look, there is lying.

Let’s take us. Advertising. Literally a job of influence and manipulation.

Of propping up products and embellishing their qualities.

Of misdirecting people’s attention from how they should feel about a product, to what we want them to feel.

Then there are our customers themselves.

They lie on surveys. They lie in focus groups.

And we use those lies as inputs to inform strategies, built on lies, on how and where to reach them, what they like, etc.

Media partners. Huge liars (except, yours truly).

Where to begin?

Partner offered attribution - full of caveats, blind spots, and oh yeah, lies.

Have you ever seen or read a partner added value brand study that didn’t say their media had a positive impact on the brand?

Let me know, I want to shake their hands.

But you probably haven’t. Because most media partners want that next RFP, to cover their asses, and are delivering reports to people who also want to, cover their asses.

Partner offered ads - full of below the fold crap and unviewable bullshit.

Or, wait - the ads just don’t exist! Thanks, programmatic adtech community.

Partner offered sponsorships - that exclusive, urgent window that if you don’t commit soon, it will sell out?

Congrats, you’re the 5th person they’re pitching after everyone said no.

Rule of thumb - if a sponsorship is still available at least a quarter out from when the event or content is coming out, run away.

Even the content is now a lie.

Overshadowed by Elon’s truth bomb was a story that Sports Illustrated was hiding the fact that they were using fake, AI writers to write stories.

Who cares if they use AI? No one does. It’s Sports Illustrated digital after all, a brand long forgotten.

But it’s the fact that they hid it that just adds skepticism to an industry already rife with it.

So let’s stop the act.

Elon’s truth bomb was offensive.

It was also refreshing.

We are an industry full of liars and lying - strategies are built on lies customers tell themselves, work is produced that more or less props up a product to be more than it is, and runs on media networks that lie about where it runs and how it performs.

Now, this isn’t supposed to be a shot at everyone across the industry.

I know plenty of amazing people trying to do great, honest work across the board - creative agencies, media partners, clients, etc.

But the reaction to Elon’s statement is just ridiculous.

Twitter was merely the first scapegoat of 2023’s budget cuts, and Elon just made it easier for teams to cut a line item that wasn’t “working” for them anyway.

But let’s not pretend he isn’t telling the truth.

He is.

A lot of us just aren’t.

OK, that was pretty cynical.

Let’s round it out on a positive note.

So, everyone in advertising lies.

How can you help your clients, brands, etc. see the truth in 2024?

A few ways.

First, if you’re going to target, don’t just assume who your audience is.

Use quality, action-oriented data that people can’t lie about.

For example, purchase data.

It’s hard to lie about what you actually buy.

Or what you watch.

Which is why Amazon, Roku, Uber, etc. are such interesting ad partners.

You can talk about how much you hate brand X or love going to the movies.

But if their data shows you do or don’t, that’s the truth.

Second, hold more in-person focus groups.

It’s easy to miss lies in customer surveys or even in social listening.

These tools paint one picture of a person that the people themselves want you to see, at that moment.

But getting up close and personal with people, and asking them questions, will help you pick up not only on what they see, but how they react physically and emotionally in the room.

Third, if you are an agency team recommending a media partner, here’s a rule:

You can’t recommend them unless at least one person on the team has consumed it for a week straight.

Sometimes in this fast paced world, recommendations get cobbled together too quickly, without putting ourselves in the shoes of the people who are actually going to be seeing the ads.

But is the experience actually good or crap? Are we among other advertisers we want to be associated with in this program, or are we a modern product running alongside ads for ointments and teas geared at geezers?

Finally, just be honest with yourself.

Are you measuring media in a way that really captures the impact its having?

Are your strategies built on actual things people do, vs. just what they say?

Is your work a house of cards, protecting a product that's not up to snuff, and you as a marketing lead need to work with the product lead to figure out how to fix those gaps with the collective resources and budget you have internally?

Just be honest. And don’t care about the blowback.

The truth hurts for a little. It doesn’t last as much as the lies.

Stay thinkin,

Danny