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Marketing, PR, Law = Lying

Some time back, a friend of mine exclaimed that marketers, public relations and lawyers are basically, well... liars.

I guess his stand was that since these people only present the "good" side of things, and not disclose or present the "bad" side, it misleads people and therefore they are lying.

Since I am a marketer-to-be myself, I defended his claim and said that we're not liars... we're just making things (positive things, of course) visible for consumers so that they can make better decisions with the options laid out to in front of them.

Well, I wouldn't say that marketing, PR and law lie. If I were to put it in another way, then I would say it is manipulation. Haha. Only the positive things are brought to light while the negative things are hidden (or not placed too much emphasis on). Afterall, these people have objectives and clients to serve, and this is probably the way things work.

But I do agree that they are all rather manipulative haha.

Say for example Marketing: Advertisements are created with the objective of making the consumer think that he/she needs the product because of its certain attributes. That's why we learn consumer behaviour right? So that we know which type of strategy is more attractive to the consumer, with the ultimate aim of making the consumer purchase (or have the intention to purchase) the product. You obviously cannot talk about the negative aspects of the product (assuming that it has them along with the positive attributes) since this is not consistent with the objective of encouraging purchase.

Then for PR: When things turn bad, the PR agency is the one that steps out to make things right. PR is especially manipulative since they make use of newpapers and other reliable media sources to make people perceive the company in a better light.

Law: You actually serve a client and you get paid to defend him/her. Need I say more?

However, I would like to emphasize that this is just how the various industries work. to each its own. But there are still regulators around to make sure that things do not get out of hand. (e.g. ads cannot LIE about certain attributes if not the company will get into big trouble).

Therefore, I would say that these professions are just making things "look better", by presenting the good side of the story. Lying is incorrect since lying means to twist facts... rather... "manipulating" could be a better term ;)
Edited: I just thought of an even better euphemism for "lying" or "manipulation". I noticed that many like to call it "educating the public". Food for thought :)

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