Advertising has always had a complicated relationship with truth. Ads have blurred the lines between exaggeration and truth for all time. But what about when ads are a hoax or a lie, done purely to garner attention? Is this new wave thinking, or unethical? OLIVER MILMAN reports.
Only the naïve would believe that every piece of advertising was scrupulously truthful, yet, as recent examples for Witchery and Tourism Queensland have shown, the evolving world of branded content has opened up fresh ethical questions.
Fashion line Witchery was outed, after initial denials, as being the brand behind a faked YouTube video that saw one of its catalogue models pretend to be searching for a mystery man – via a Witchery jacket, naturally.
Meanwhile, Tourism Queensland’s successful “Dream job” campaign was somewhat tainted by the revelation that a young woman filmed getting a ‘tattoo’ to support her application was, in fact, on the payroll of the tourism body’s ad agency, CumminsNitro Brisbane.
So what exactly are the boundaries for truthfulness?
“You have to be truthful as consumers today see bullshit a mile away and their barriers come up,” says Marks Green, managing director of Three Drunk Monkeys. “If it’s a great idea, people will watch, but you can’t trick them into being involved with a brand. It’s amazing the amount of times I’ve heard about a brand doing something dishonest.
“The idea behind the ‘Dream job’ was brilliant, but it went wrong when they thought they could pull the wool over people’s eyes. I’m not sure why they just didn’t leave it as it was.”
Michael Branagh, managing director of CumminsNitro Brisbane, candidly admits the faked footage was a mistake, but feels that each case of ‘dishonesty’ needs to be judged individually.
“The idea was to show people the quality of applications we were looking for and to put some content up on the site,” he says. “It probably should’ve been made clearer that it was a sample application. We did it several weeks beforehand and just didn’t realise the phenomenal response the dream job would get.
“The difference with Witchery is that ours is a genuine job offer which hasn’t been derailed, whereas their campaign was planned like that from day one and has been found out pretty quickly.”
Branagh feels teething problems with social media are inevitable: “There has to be transparency and honesty as a lack of trust can damage a brand.
“But it’s a fine line. Clients are looking to us as experts in social marketing, but these channels are evolving every day. The biggest challenge is for marketers to give up control of the content so that it’s seen as genuine. I’ve had clients asking their staff to email their friends with YouTube clips to comment on. You just have to let it ride on its own.”
But isn’t a playful relationship with the truth what advertising is all about? While critics talk of dishonesty, agencies prefer to point to savvy consumers and the bundles of generated publicity.
“Lots of campaigns set up a false pretence – no one was saying this girl was the love of their lives and were devastated it wasn’t real,” says Adam Ferrier, planning partner at Naked, the agency behind the Witchery controversy. “We created a campaign for Golfpunk that ‘hypnotised’ people to be brand advocates for the rest of their lives. It caused outrage, but it doubled distribution almost overnight and won a Lion at Cannes.
“People are confusing outrage for ethics. Whether it’s a duck on a surfboard or a girl with a jacket, there’s always an element of doubt in a story. People on the street just aren’t upset by this.”
Damien Bray, entertainment director at Brand New Media, which has made content for Uncle Tobys and King Gee, goes further: “It’s like any other marketing execution – if it’s a great idea and has credibility, then fantastic. People don’t have to make a purchase. Are they being conned? That’s a bit of a stretch to say. This is the era of the savvy consumer, so it’s game on as far as I’m concerned.”
James McGrath, ECD at Clemenger Melbourne, agrees, up to a point. “In advertising, you spend a lot of time suspending belief and creating a story,” he says. “The (Witchery) idea in itself was perfectly fine, it just wasn’t done terribly well. But when they denied it was their campaign, it went to another level. To deny it when challenged is delusional.”
A well-executed, entertaining idea can overshadow any claims of deception. A spoof viral ad for clothing brand Ecko, created by Droga5 in 2006, forced the Pentagon to deny on three separate occasions that a graffiti artist actually had daubed the US president’s Air Force One in spray paint. The audacity of the ad was widely applauded.
For Warren Brown, ECD at BMF, the quality and context of an unbranded piece of content is critical. Brown was behind the aforementioned “Duck on a surfboard” video, which claimed that the beaked animals were given exceptional powers by eating the Wonder Performance Bread brand.
“I think you’d send a duck on a surfboard to your mates, but not the girl in the jacket – there doesn’t seem to be much entertainment value there,” he says. “You never set out to deceive, but you want to get people curious and stay with you until you seal the deal. ”
“People don’t mind being had if they’ve had a good laugh, but they don’t like to be made to feel stupid. If they are entertained by a piece of content, then that’s the pay-off for having a brand message in there too. Everyone ends up getting what they want.
