Are you familiar with the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf? It's a classic Aesop fable about a young shepherd, who fraudulently called for help by repeatedly shouting "Wolf!"
Local villagers who came to his aid several times discovered that his cries were bogus, and he had wasted their time.
Finally, when the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers ignored his cries for help, and the wolf ate the flock of sheep, and the boy himself.
The moral of the story is:
"Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed."
That's the problem with a lot of advertising. It's crying wolf. It can't be believed, or trusted. And that's a shame. Because in my opinion, it's wrong to use advertising to mislead customers about the virtues of a product, when you know for a fact, the product is not what it's represented to be.
Just imagine how you would feel if someone did that to you. You wouldn't like it very much would you? See my point?
Look, I'm a marketing guy. So, I understand hype in advertising. Heck, I use it myself, on occasion. But if you're going to hype your product to the moon and beyond, you'd better make darn sure that it can deliver on all the outlandish claims and promises presented in your advertising.
Unfortunately, few products ever do, and that's disappointing.
Now if you happen to be one of those "boy who cried wolf" marketers whose advertising is at best exaggerated, and at worst a pack of lies, your days are numbered. Why?
Because while "you may be able to fool some of the people some of the time, you can't fool all of the people all of the time." And once people discover that you're nothing more than a slick charlatan - a con artist, if you will, they will avoid you and your company like the Bubonic Plague. Even worse, they'll tell others to avoid you as well. And that will be the death knell of your reputation.
Because a bad reputation is like viral marketing in reverse. It will take your business down faster than the Titanic!
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