Have you ever read a disclaimer or a condition that comes with a a marketing offer and wondered what the $*%# does this mean? Well so have I, and after figuring these things out (the hard way), I’ve decided to spare you, my dear readers the same agony by putting together a little translation guide. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are the real meanings behind ten of the most insidious marketing lies.

1. Loss Limited to Initial Investment - You can and probably will, lose all the money you invested, but hey, at least you didn’t lose more than you invested.

2. Including but not Limited to… - Basically, if anything goes wrong you can’t blame us for anything, especially the stuff we haven’t even thought of.

3. 15% Restocking Fee Applies - There really is no return policy, but we know that customers like that sort of thing so we advertise it. If you really want your money back you may be able to resell the junk we just sold you on Craigslist for more than 85% of what you paid for it. (If you’re lucky.)

4. Automatically Renewed for Your Convenience - We love taking money from you! Especially when you don’t even know we’re doing it!

5. 24/7 Customer Service - As long as you call any time between 9 & 5, eastern standard time of course.

6. We have Customer Service People Waiting to Serve You! - Only if you know enough to push 0 or # and have speaker phone so you can do something productive while we keep you on hold for about an hour, hoping that you will get frustrated, hang up and stop bothering us.

7. Lowest Prices in Town - Until you go to Walmart and see the exact same thing for half the price.

8. Guaranteed Credit on Approval - I hope your kids really like whatever you’re buying because because they’ll be making payments on it too.

9. 30 Minutes or it’s Free - Only if you’re prepared to argue with the delivery guy for an additional 30 minutes.

10. Rebate - We don’t really like low prices, we just pretend we do because customers seem to like it. Really, we’re just hoping you buy and forget about the whole rebate thing because we’ve made it so difficult and complicated in an effort to put you off.

So after reading this list you may tempted to think that all marketers are liars and that marketing is all about telling lies. However, this isn’t the case at all. As I argued in an earlier post, fundamentally, marketing is about storytelling. The difficulty in telling stories is that they set expectations and create visions in the consumer psyche. I call this phenomena a Benefit Scenario. This is what every ad and marketing campaign is designed to do. It tells us a story about a version of ourselves that is better in some way, that has benefited by partaking in a particular product. The challenge is then live up to that the promise of that story. Unfortunately, it is too often the case that companies say one thing and do another, creating what I refer to as an Experience Gap. I’ve boiled it down to simple formula:

Benefit Scenario - Execution = Experience Gap

In the same way that a brilliant play enacted by amateur performers is no longer brilliant, great marketing without great execution only creates disillusionment which leads to disappointment and finally disengagement. The right formula is simple: Say what you mean and do what you say.

Photo credit: *Silihari*