Marketing = half of the truth at best?

The perennial debate about marketing ethics is matched only by the ceaseless shenanigans of marketers themselves. There is a whole spectrum of ethical standards in marketing and advertising that is in full public view at any point in time.

At one end of the spectrum is the whole slew of online and offline ads that promise you everything from the bizarre to the sublime: hair re-growth, near-magical enhancement of various parts of the male or female anatomy (bigger is always better, right?), the chance to own a piece of land on the moon or an oil field in Nigeria, ideas to make millions of dollars while sitting at home, miraculous healing for all kinds of ailments, spiritual attainment and even immortality! You may say this is not just marketing but corporate fraud, and I would concur. What amazes me even more than the brazen ubiquity of this kind of marketing messaging is the sheer gullibility of people: I read recently that a website that sells ownership certificates for plots of lunar land for USD 100 a pop actually managed to sell a few thousand of them!

At the next level of the spectrum are marketing claims that are not totally false, but are significantly exaggerated. Several cosmetic and health supplement products readily come to mind in this category, as does a lot of tourism marketing.

For instance, a recent Malaysian tourism ad stirred controversy by featuring a Balinese dance under its umbrella theme of "Malaysia, truly Asia", putting an ironic spotlight on the word "truly" in the slogan.

Move further along the ethical spectrum and you come across marketing that misleads by omission instead of by commission. The most common - and irritating - form is the "conditions apply" type of promotion, which promises you something but then puts multiple eligibility criteria that become unacceptable to most buyers. A variant of the trick is to hide the conditions in footnotes in font size 6. Hidden charges for various "free" or "low cost" offerings also fall in the same category.

That brings us to the ethical end of the marketing spectrum. Here we find brands that (more or less) fulfill the promises they make to consumers and do not grossly exaggerate their benefits or suppress critical information. I would argue that this end of the spectrum represents about half of the truth. In other words, at its ethical best, marketing gives us half-truths.

Let me explain my argument. Marketing is about persuading people to buy into a proposition. This proposition could be a product or a service, a job, a charity, a cult, a religion, a political candidate, a war or a concept like marriage or parenthood. It could be anything, but that doesn't matter. Any proposition is made up of two components, or two halves. There is the benefit half, or what the proposition gives you, and there is cost half, or what the proposition extracts from you in return for offering the benefit.

Given that its goal is to persuade (and not just inform) people, marketing focuses only on the benefit half; embellishes it to make it appear highly appealing and then shouts it out loudly and repeatedly to catch our attention. No one "markets" the cost half in quite the same way. Not even close. The cost half is left to buyer's "due diligence" or "self discovery". In other words, the principle is, "buyer beware". But given the information asymmetry and the gullibility of buyers, is that a sound principle or just a convenient one?

For instance, do you believe real estate developers could sell as many apartments if their marketing focused on the full cost and dramatized the emotions associated with servicing a 30-year mortgage as powerfully as it focuses on the pleasures of home ownership? Would as many people would buy into the proposition of a credit card if the marketing shouted out the message of a 24-36% interest rate per annum as loudly as it shouts out the (rather gimmicky) benefits? High profile jobs would find fewer takers if the long hours and burn out rates were advertised as effectively as the salaries, and less people would buy investment products if the risks were as well marketed (not just mentioned) as the returns are.

Marketing deals in half-truths, simply because it is much easier to seduce people with the benefits and then let them self-discover the full impact of the costs post facto. It would be way harder to have a fully balanced conversation with the consumer that describes and dramatizes both the benefits and the costs equally, and then let the consumer sign up not only for the benefits, but also for the costs.

What if marketing were to be a pure, unbiased and entirely accurate information sharing service that fully communicates both benefits and costs with equal weightage to allow consumers to decide whether or not to accept a proposition? In other words, what if we lived in a world where all marketing told the whole truth, all the time? I think this would result in less sales for all the propositions in the world. Hence the world economy would be much smaller, the difference being equal to the economic value added of marketing. But would that also mean less consumerism, more stability and less frustration due to unrealistic expecations being missed?

Would we be better off if marketing told the whole truth? What do you think?

Guest or host?

Shakespeare famously wrote in his play As You Like It, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts …"

Like him, many thinkers have reflected on the nature and the purpose of our life as humans and there are some themes that emerge very clearly from this thinking. One of these themes relates to our transience; the ephemeral nature of our existence, our inescapable mortality. Another one relates to the notion that we're not fully in control, that the script of our lives is being written (or has already been written) by something or someone other than us.

In other words, we lead an uncertain life that is hurtling towards a certain death. How does this knowledge affect our view of life and how we relate to the world around us? One response is what I call the 'guest mindset', in some ways similar to being an actor on a stage. There is this sense that we are just passing by, that we don't really belong here, that we're visiting on a tourist visa. By extension, this would mean that the world also doesn't really belong to us, that we are just guests here. An actor may play his part with the fullest of sincerity, but the costume he wears and the props he uses don't really belong to him, the lines he speaks are not really his, his relationships with the rest of the cast are make-believe and even the emotions he feels are conjured or manufactured by him in response to the demands of the script. An actor is invited to play his part, he is a guest: the play and the stage do not belong to him.

The "guest mindset" makes our world a little less real for us, because nothing really matters that much to a guest, nor is the guest in full control of his surroundings. So the guest does not need to take ownership or responsibility, either; after all, he is just a guest. He checks in, stays for a while, and then checks out. By this token, the world's problems are not really ours and the task of making the world better should belong to someone else - to the host, whoever that is.

Wait a minute - if we are all guests, who is the host? Yes, I know, God; but the guy seems to delegate almost everything back to us. So now it seems we're guests with at least some of the responsibilities of the host. Or are we, in fact, the hosts?

Does our reality become less real just because it is short-lived and not eternal? Is our control useless just because it is partial and not absolute? Perhaps not. A positron might exist merely for a millionth of a second, but it is real for that duration. And while it does not control its destiny, it can still make a contribution (PET scanners powered by positrons are saving many lives today).

I think a "host mindset" is more empowering and useful. We own this place, albeit on a short lease. We are not just visiting on a tourist visa. It is both our privilege and our responsibility to do what we can to make this place better, as opposed to just checking in, staying for a while, and checking out. We fulfill ourselves by investing ourselves fully and engaging completely with our world and with all its issues, as opposed to being a mere actor or even worse, a spectator. We create the next generation of hosts and bequeath to them our life's work, for them to take forward. We enrich our soul by enriching our experience of life, long or short.

As you think of how you relate to your world - your work, your community, your country - how do you see yourself, as a guest or as the host?