You want to tell the best story you can, to showcase your product in the best light, to prefer you over others. So you show the optimistic end of what you deliver. The burger looks generous and juicy. The staff behind the counter are attractive and smile. The car corners beautifully on endless, empty roads. The child in the trolley in the busy but not overly crowded supermarket is gorgeous, and the product is lit up like Christmas.
Every brand manager wants to tell that story. Because it’s safe, clean, positive and aspirational. It promotes the product benefits. It ticks all the boxes. Except one …
It’s untrue.
The actual experience of course is nothing like that. And everyone knows it.
In reality the burger is dismal and squashed, the staff don’t smile never mind talk, the roads are jammed with irritated souls who make getting anywhere miserable and slow, the supermarket smells of over-ripe fruit and you can barely see the product because the fluorescent tube overhead is on the blink (sometimes literally).
Right across mainstream media, brands are still making promises they know they can’t deliver on. And they continue to wonder why effectiveness is faltering.
As I’ve said many times, the most dangerous word in branding is … who?
But the most dangerous sentence is almost as curt – “I don’t believe you.”
