Deception or Truth as a Business Plan
100 years ago, marketing involved truth. Sales involved truth. It had to. The relationship was one-to-one. Buyer and seller looked each other in the eye. The shopkeeper or farmer or salesman talked to the customer individually. Yes, the marketer could lie, but only for a time and only to so many people. Eventually, deception and dishonest marketing would ruin the liar’s reputation.
Then came the “mass market.” We produced for many at a time. With the mass market came mass marketing. The days of the Mad Men were in full effect in the 50’s and 60’s. Spinning a story was important. Sales played a bigger role in a product’s success than the product did. It didn’t always go as far as deception, but sometimes it did. Witness big tobacco.
After many years of mass marketing, truth came back into vogue. The shift started many years ago, but still persists today. Our society doesn’t permit lies the way it once did. There are quite a few reasons. Here are a few examples.
Litigation
It’s a lot harder to carry on with lies when the price of the truth is a bankrupt company or even a bankrupt industry. The bigger the lie, the bigger the cost. The asbestos industry and the tobacco industry have seen their lies turn into enormous financial problems. The food industry may be next.
It’s easy to look down upon plaintiffs’ lawyers. Injury lawyers are perceived as profiting from other people’s misery, even chasing other people’s misery. In truth, injury lawyers act as a regulator for our society. For companies and people who harm others, there will be a price to pay. That price and that payment are determined and extracted largely by plaintiffs’ lawyers. It’s an important part of our society. Without a thriving tort system, society would look like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. You cannot rely on people to look out for their fellow man when they have a profit motive to do otherwise. Simply a fact of God’s world. I will get more into the virtues of plaintiff’s lawyers in further blog posts.
The Internet
The Internet does two different, but related things in leading us into a truth based society with truth based commerce. First, the Internet makes access to information much easier. Second, the Internet spreads a message 1000 times faster than anything ever has before.
Access to information comes in numerous forms on the Internet. You can find the relationships between people and who actually owns things. You can read people’s opinion or insights quickly and easily. You can get access to public records digitally, thereby saving vast amounts of time. The truth is usually on the Internet.
Once the truth is found, it spreads like wildfire. Sharing a massage via social media, a blog, or even just via group email makes communication of 25 years ago look prehistoric. If it’s worth sharing, it will be shared eventually.
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Yet still, some people go into the deception business. If you rely on consumer ignorance to sell a product, you are in the deception business. This is true even if you aren’t lying. Anyone relying on lack of information to sell is nearing the tail end of their lifecycle, whether they know it or not.
Examine the most successful wealth building companies of the last 10 years. Two examples, Google and Amazon, are promotors of truth. If you promote truth for consumers – give consumers access to information – you have a business model that lasts. If you do the opposite, the world is coming for you.