If It’s Advertising, It’s A Lie…And that’s Okay (Maybe?)

Disclaimer: This post is not about a trend in advertising. It’s not about a brand’s genius new strategy. It’s also not about how technology is changing communication or the cultural habits of some consumer group. There are no embedded videos or flashy pictures either.

I was inspired by an opinion piece in the New York Times last week written by an Israeli professor, Yuval Hariri. Dr. Hariri has a background in medieval and military history, so obviously this is super relevant to our class! I will now attempt to summarize his findings and pose some questions that I hope you might find interesting.

What is more powerful, truth or fiction?  Most people would likely say truth and, indeed, we learned a lot last week about the need for brands to remain truthful to their customers. The thinking goes that by misrepresenting reality, leaders will eventually lose to rivals who offer a more truthful path. Hariri goes on to define two types of power: Power that is used to manipulate objective reality (creating man-made things outside the realm of the natural world), and power that is used to manipulate human beliefs.

According to Hariri, human success stems from our ability to organize and cooperate on a large scale. And to get people to cooperate at that scale, we must share a common belief/story. But here’s the thing: that common story doesn’t need to be true. In fact, fictional stories actually have many advantages over truthful ones.

First, fiction is local, not universal. This is advantageous because it helps distinguish insiders from outsiders. Second, if all you have to do is believe a true story to show your loyalty, anyone can easily fake loyalty because it’s easy to believe a truth. Having faith in a leader when they tell the truth is easy, anyone can do it. But having faith in your leader when they make outrageous, obviously untrue claims…that’s loyalty! Finally, especially in politics, telling the whole honest-to-goodness truth has proven to be a losing strategy. We may say we like the truth, but no one actually wants ALL of the truth. Even our more “honest” political leaders are far from completely truthful.

Now you might say “But Ben, as handsome as you are, I must disagree! No one can maintain a lie forever. The house of cards will eventually collapse. People who believe irrational stories will inevitably become irrational in other parts of their lives and then the system falls apart.”  In fact, this has proven time and again to be untrue. The article gives many examples from history of times were societies were perfectly capable of believing unscientific, irrational lunacy while also excelling in science, technology, and other areas. The human brain is phenomenal at compartmentalizing.

Now here’s the interesting question that Hariri asks: Is this so bad? Essentially, leaders have a choice. To unite people through a shared fiction or let people know the whole truth and lose group cohesion. The most powerful movements in human history tend to opt for social cohesion over unadulterated truth. The tradeoff of losing some rationality for a huge amount of social cohesion has proven to be an attractive one. How many untrue myths about America do we insist on believing just for the sake of maintaining group cohesion?

So, obviously, this got me thinking if this has any relevance to advertising. Yes, we’re taught that brands should always be honest. They should always be transparent. They should always act ethically and value good behavior over a quick profit in the short term.  But, to what degree is that really true? How often do we hear that good advertising is all about storytelling? This was even one of the main points of our live session this week. We’ve already learned that pitches are also about presentation and storytelling. But deep down we ALL know that the best stories are fictional. The stories that bring us together and get us to act and think as one are fictional stories (or at least, they’re not the whole truth).

I know I’m being a bit contrarian, but how much of this “ethical advertising” is bullshit? Obviously, there’s a difference between a blatantly misleading advertisement and a well-crafted fictional story. But can we drop the act just a little bit? If advertising is essentially storytelling, then by definition isn’t it untruthful? One question we might want to ask is not “How can we be more truthful?” but instead “What degree of fiction can we get away with?”

By the way, here’s the link to the original article. I suggest you read it! That’s also my reference. It’s right there…do we need references?? Anyway, yeah there is it!