Creative Marketing is Not a Band-Aid

Posted on April 29, 2008
Posted by Mike Berkley

The term “authenticity” is something that we social media types toss around like a baseball. Here’s a story to illustrate its meaning:

Seen the ads for the much-anticipated, sexy and action-packed TV series “Scarlet”? The ads are all over the web, as well as on broadcast TV. Check out the ad on the Onion News Network (”Scarlet” is currently the sponsor). The ads seem to be everywhere I look.

Well, guess what? It’s all a big hoax, thought up by Agency.com.

From the Wall Street Journal today:

On Monday night, about 500 people planned to gather at the Pacific Design Center in Hollywood for a swanky screening of “Scarlet,” a new TV series from director David Nutter that stars Natassia Malthe.

It looked like a standard new-show screening, right down to the 32-foot-long red carpet and Wolfgang Puck catering. But the event, part of a $100 million global advertising and marketing campaign for LG Electronics, was actually an elaborate ruse. Attendees were expecting a screening of a new TV series called “Scarlet,” but “Scarlet” was in fact “a new series of TVs” with a red back panel.

The marketing hoax is an attempt by the south Korean electronics company to overcome the commoditization of the television business.

As part of the public relations plan for the show, LG has had Ms. Malthe drum up publicity b attending red-carpet events, including Fashion Week in New York, the Bafta awards in London, and several film premieres in Los Angeles. The result: plenty of online, TV and magazine stories about “Scarlet”.

When I read this, I first thought: “Rock on! Now that’s some bold, creative marketing! We could use some of that!”

Yet… no. This is stuff that PR & marketing people get all giddy over. But it’s stuff that consumers hate. Breaking news, folks: consumers do not like to be lied to by corporations. Even worse, they hate to be manipulated by advertising.

We live in an age where brands have to be honest, because the truth is too easily exposed. This is where authenticity, a favorite buzz word of social marketing pundits, comes into play. Consumers generally want to drink the Cool Aid; they want to believe in the brand message. And by doing so, they are placing their trust in the brand, often putting themselves at risk (most of the time it’s social risk, but in some cases it can be physical risk). If the brand betrays that individual’s trust, they’ve lost him/her forever.

If a brand is concerned that being authentic might expose a flaw or weakness, then those are deeper issues that need to be fixed on the back-end (ie, within the product or in the board room), not on the front-end. Creative marketing no longer works as a band-aid; consumers have gotten too smart and too resourceful for that.

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