How do you measure a liar - and what should the punishment be?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 24, 2013 

At times in the past when I've told people my business is advertising, some have been known to retort, "Oh you're a professional liar are you?"

Depending on my mood I can just laugh it off, or I can reply. "In advertising you are tightly bound by rules, laws, censorship, government oversight, industry self-regulation - and the fact that lying is plain bad marketing. No we're not the liars, it's the rest of you. And public servants are the worst."

I like to toss in the last phrase in memory of the many times when I've been assured that the submission, for whatever government advertising campaign, would only involve four companies, only to discover that a dozen have tendered and the contract was always going to go to the incumbent from the start.

They just wanted your submission to pump up the numbers, with no compensation for the time and resources your team spend. Beware the smiling civil servant.

Lying has been big news the past week, with Lance Armstrong making his confession to Pope Oprah. The fact that he was sitting like Henry VIII at his coronation didn't help credibility much, and in the confessional stakes he wasn't as convincing as Tiger Woods or Marion Jones before him.

I have to say that I can't be too harsh on a man who is nevertheless capable of scaling the Alps on two wheels at full speed the way he did. You could fill me with more drugs than Ozzie Osborne and I still couldn't get to the top of Bourke Street.

Nevertheless, his sponsoring days seem to be well and truly over. The big names have fled - Nike, Anheuser-Busch, Oakley and the rest. Cycling has always been a marginal sport compared to the football codes and it was only Armstrong's overwhelming success that brought it into centre field.

So much of marketing focuses on the bigger and brighter and better. So even a little fib can be a downer. Like the eleven inch Subway Footer. One photograph from Perth showing the too-short sandwich alongside a tape measure has exploded into a world-wide story, leaping from Facebook and the social sites into the news pages and bulletins of the global media. Subway PR have been working double time explaining that a foot does not always mean a foot.

But it also depends on what's the lie and who's the liar. So last year when the British Advertising Standards Agency banned two L'Oreal ads for over-enthusiastic digital retouching, Julia Roberts ("Teint Miracle") and Christy Turlington (Maybelline's "The Eraser") were not pilloried for lying about the depth of their crow's feet or frown lines.

Two years ago Dior designer John Galliano was videoed in a drunken anti-semitic rant that saw him sacked from his top-god position. But just this week the news came that he has been given a big-house residency - with Oscar  de la Renta. "John and I have known each other for many years and I am a great admirer of his talent," he explained. "I am happy to give him the opportunity to re-immerse himself in the world of fashion and reacclimatise in an environment where he has been so creative."

Bill Clinton still commands million-dollar speaking fees despite his historic "that woman" whopper.

And I particularly like a reader's comment, in American Advertising Age magazine's piece on Armstrong's future prospects: "Mmm let's see...a guy with a massive ego who is a liar, a bully and cheat with no morals. Any large corporations looking for a CEO?"

ray@ebeatty.com