I had intended my recent Swift article to be an empowering piece on personal responsibility. I also wanted to bust a few myths about advertising’s alleged powers of control. Judging from many of the comments, it seems that some readers took the piece for a unilateral defense of marketing, abuses included, and a disavowal of marketers’ responsibilities for what and how they sell.
Nope. I am an outspoken critic of marketing abuses. If you’d care to search my blog, you’ll find that I routinely take marketers to task for flimflam products, racism, sexism, non-promises, certain business practices, needless vitriol, and sticking flyers on my door, to name a few. And, yes, I routinely bring up personal responsibility as well. Fair is fair.
Marketing abuses indeed occur and shouldn’t be tolerated. That should be an easy call in clear-cut cases, such as outright lying. But more often, drawing lines as to what constitutes a marketing abuse is easier said than done. When Starbucks places a poster at the drive-up for their latest calorie-laden concoction, you can bet they spent good money on a studio, a photographer specializing in hot beverages, a lighting director, a food stylist, an adept headline writer, a highly paid graphic designer, and fine printing. Yes, they did all this to increase the odds of getting you to part with a few dollars for the drink in question. I suppose Starbucks could have used a cell phone camera to photograph the drink under ordinary lights and, instead of the catchy headline and layout, simply said, “Available.” They could have listed ingredients, along with a breakdown of calories by type and possible health hazards. They could have used a quick printer instead of a fine printer. For that matter, they could have printed the poster in black-and-white. They could have. If you think they should have, more power to you.
I happen to know that the most-read part of a direct mail letter is the P.S. So, if I put information likely to interest you in the P.S., am I exploiting you … or just being smart? If I know (as I do) that you’re more likely to order from a toll-free number after 10 p.m. on a Friday and least likely during Prime Time on a Wednesday evening, does honor demand that run I my TV commercial in the latter time slot to give you more of a fighting chance at not buying?
Such questions lead to gray areas. What marketers know matters, but so does how they use their knowledge. We need to consider the audience; the utility (or harm) of what’s for sale; the market’s right to spend as it chooses; when “putting your best foot forward” goes too far and becomes misrepresentation; when consumption results from advertising as opposed to other factors (such as peer influence); and more. These are difficult issues to sort through and weigh, but that’s no reason to shy from tackling them.
(Incidentally, marketers don’t know nearly as much about getting people to buy as some readers allege in comments on my earlier piece. Most marketing research is bogus and non-predictive, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, and despite big bucks spent on and because of it. But that’s another subject.)
Meanwhile, there are plenty of abuses which we can agree are blatant and require action. As an example, I’d like to share an essay that I submitted to the online edition of Advertising Age, the industry bible, about a year ago. Far from defending marketers, I disagreed with the magazine’s opposition to a threatened FTC crackdown on “results may vary” and “results not typical.”
Not that I expect all Swift readers to be satisfied. After all, I didn’t address predatory pricing, omitting pertinent information, pushing unneeded products, pushing harmful products like cigarettes and junk food, spinning, taking unfair advantage of emotions, etc., etc. All I can say is, give me time. I’ll get to them.
Here’s the essay, which Advertising Age ran in its entirety:
Sorry, folks. I’m on the government’s side. I own a direct response shop. It has long troubled me that many in my own industry rely on misleading advertising and questionable products.
Take diet plans. If you use 99% of your ad to promise miracles and 1% to say "results may vary" or "results not typical," you are using 99% of the ad to mislead, and you know it. You also know — read your own fine print — that no plan works unless you supplement it with diet and exercise. Trouble is, diet and exercise do the trick without the plan. So, diet plan marketers, you are taking money for a product that makes no or, at most, little difference.
Take natural remedies. If the formula contains all natural ingredients, the FDA has no jurisdiction over it. You can claim that your little pill "may" — very important weasel — help with myriad symptoms, provided your fly type contains statements like "these claims have not been evaluated by the FDA" and "not intended to treat or cure any disease." Wait a sec. Not intended to treat or cure? Isn’t that what the rest of the ad was about? Once again, if 99% claims miracles and 1% disclaims them, you are trying to mislead, and you know it.
Your filing cabinet may be bursting with testimonials. You may use the product yourself and truly believe it works. Irrelevant. Millions of Americans truly believe the sun travels around the earth, but their numbers and passion do not make them right. It takes controlled, scientifically validated double and triple blind tests by qualified, disinterested third parties to validate medical claims. Nor am I impressed with your so-called "clinical studies," because I know how they work. If I wanted to, I could come up with a clinical study ‘proving’ that hiring my agency "may help relieve arthritis pains."
Some might wonder what harm exists in marketing that is 99% misleading. After all, some people lose weight on the diet plans, and some derive a placebo effect from otherwise worthless natural remedies. Here’s the harm: (1) People with serious weight and/or health issues risk, to their ultimate harm, delaying real treatment while pinning false hope on your flimflam preparation. (2) Deliberately misleading is a de facto immoral practice. If you can’t see the harm in that, it tells me something about you. (3) You hurt the image of the many honest direct response practitioners out there who don’t stoop to such levels. (4) You hurt your own industry by bringing regulators down upon us all.
If direct response practitioners would self-police, the FTC wouldn’t need to get involved. Please, direct marketers: Resolve never to take on a product that you can’t sell by telling the truth.
The resolve would help you, the industry, and people at large.