Anyone in marketing or advertising can’t have missed the recent furore over the Witchery viral campaign. Purported to be a genuine YouTube video and personal website of an attractive woman attempting to track down a man, Cinderella style, with his lost jacket, the campaign was designed to promote the launch of Witchery’s new men’s line of clothing. As is often the case in these controversies, polarised the industry with discussions about ethics in marketing and how online viral content should be executed.

When outlets such as the Sydney Morning Herald outed the video as a marketing fake, Witchery fervently denied the claim across the media. Heidi, the woman in question, was even trotted out on telly to protest her innocence and demonstrate that she – and her quest – were real.

Does the Truth Matter?

I won’t rehash the hundreds of blog posts and media articles that have dissected this debacle every which way. If you want to read the full background and the arguments put forward on both sides, check out Marketing is a Dirty Word, mUmBRELLA and BannerBlog.

Yet one thing still strikes me as odd, and Naked – the marketing agency behind the campaign – haven’t been called on it yet in anything I’ve read.

Naked chief executive Mat Baxter defended the hoax to BandT. “It is a very fine line between denying and lying but you have to bring an element of context to the scenario- and realise that sometimes there are issues in play that prevent the disclosure that the journalist might like.” Is there a fine line between saying ‘no’ when the truthful answer is ‘yes’? Doesn’t seem to be any line there at all in my opinion. Those ‘other issues’ that apparently give context to this denial demonstrate the flaw to this whole debate.

Naked’s defense of the campaign has revolved around the old chestnut that people don’t mind if it’s fiction or not. In fact, they revealed after the media explosion that claimed most respondents didn’t care one way or the other. Was the media out of touch for calling foul? Adam Ferrier of Naked was interviewed in the latest issue of BandT and was very clear in his belief that people are unconcerned whether a piece of viral video is fake or not. “Whether it’s a duck on a surfboard or a girl with a jacket, there’s alway an element of doubt in a story. People on the street just aren’t upset by this.”

So why was the campaign fierceley denied when it was exposed in the media. Because Naked wasn’t ready to make the big reveal – their marketing plan was not ready to move to the next stage.

Therefore, there must be some value in the campaign being believed as true. If it didn’t matter, then why not ‘fess up when called on it? By denying it was a marketing campaign when first challenged so publically, Naked defeated their own argument that the public doesn’t mind one way or the other. All marketing value would be lost, once exposed.

This seems to have been supported by new stats that show traffic to the viral video plummetted after it was exposed as a hoax.

Naked were willing to lie on national television to protect the deception in their ad. This decision could not have been taken lightly and was designed to protect a badly executed campaign by continuing to assure people it was real.

Should Marketers Lie for a Living?

Again in BandT, Baxter decided to defend the campaign by characterising the entire industry as deceptive. “Everything in advertising and marketing isn’t always accurate. That’s what advertising is – largely story telling or taking consumers on a journey. It’s up to them to believe what they are seeing or engaging with the communications.”

The idea of marketing as an inherently deceptive medium is often trotted out as a defense in any of these ‘ethical’ controversies; advertising is about bias and spin and twisting the truth to influence the consumer, isn’t it? All of us in marketing downplay the negative and exaggerate the positive in ways that could be construed as deception every day, don’t we?

The AANA Advertiser Code of Ethics certainly doesn’t think so. “1.2 Advertisements shall not be misleading or deceptive or be likely to mislead or deceive.” Note that the code doesn’t make that deception specific to the product – any form of deception or misleading behaviour is considered a breach of the Code. Sure, a Code is not a law or regulation, but it does put the lie to the idea that deception in marketing is okay.

The Witchery / Naked campaign proves that viral advertising of this nature is not about the fun or the creativity but is about the deception, obfuscating the truth. The wider public might not feel it is a big deal now, but will they when a large proportion of their online video or email inbox is indistinguishable between fact and fiction? Will they be so forgiving when the lines blur so much that no one knows what is genuine and what is a marketing construct and more and more media becomes tainted with the belief that people don’t care what’s real?

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Tags: ethics, marketing, social media, viral, Witchery, YouTube