Liar Liar Pants on Fire

There’s an election around the corner in the UK, US, and France, which means politicians are telling more porkies than usual. Obvs.

Smarter people than me have written pieces on the psychology of lying in its various guises, but one area that I found particularly interesting is the belief that it might stem from the way we are brought up. I have three children and without hesitation, I’ve convinced them that Father Christmas exists, I do my timesheets every day, and that they must show appreciation for terrible, re-gifted birthday presents. This is a problem because as Psychologist Robert Feldman, author of The Liar in Your Life, points out, “We give our kids very mixed messages. What they ultimately learn is that even though honesty is the best policy, it's also at times fine and preferable to lie about things.”

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So, what’s all this got to do with my day job? Well, the Advertising Association recently published a report which stated that for the first time in a decade, advertising is “no longer the least-trusted industry”. Hardly cause for an open top bus parade (fittingly, the preferred media touchpoint of the deceitful), but positive news for those who believe that McCann 's “truth well told” mantra is something we should all get behind.

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However, before we get too carried away, there are still some big issues that aren’t showing any signs of going away that I want to explore further.

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The first is the politics of agency life. The stories I’ve heard about the regularity of history being quickly re-written by power-hungry, insecure individuals when their bosses aren’t happy with a piece of work, is startling. Integrity goes out of the window and the blame game begins. It’s an age-old problem in all walks of life, but it saddens me that as I’ve got older it’s become more obvious. I love working in advertising because of the teamwork that goes into creating great work. The serial liars who brown nose their way up the food chain therefore remain a scourge on our industry and need ratting out.

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Secondly, I want to shine a light on some well-known brands that specialise in a specific type of bullsh*t that can often go undetected. A group with vivid imaginations, fake passports and a complete disregard for authenticity. Still not sure what I’m on about?

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Meet the provenance porky tellers.

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To be clear, I’m not talking about your Russian Meerkats from VCCP or anything obviously fictional like that. I can also forgive brands like Aesop , H?agen-Dazs Shops and Hotel Chocolat who’ve gone for an exotic name to aid brand perception but haven’t outright lied about their backstory. And I’m acutely aware that many products are no longer produced in the country where the brand was born.

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My issue therefore isn’t with those who embellish the truth. It’s with those shameless bastards who tell outright lies about their origin.

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Before going to town on them, unlike the agency brown-nosers, I actually have some respect for these mass market fibbers. Credit where credit is due, they’ve mastered the art of (fictional) storytelling and if their sales figures are anything to go by, their elaborate lies have paid off in the short-term.

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However, they do also make me feel uneasy. Mark Twain told us to “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, but if we’re to clean up our act as an industry, and distance ourselves from the sleazy world of politics, building brands on a web of provenance-based lies isn’t a great look.

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At this point, it’s very tempting to reel off a list of names that would fail lie detector tests when quizzed about their birthplace. The likes of Hollister Co. and Frankie & Benny's are two examples, but given we’ll naively be guzzling pints of the stuff during the Euros, I want to highlight a more topical provenance porky teller.

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A brand created in 2020 that’s less authentic than Del Boy’s “Peckham Spring Water”, but with a name I could imagine him casually dropping into conversation.

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“Madrí Excepcional, Rodney, Madrí Excepcional.”

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In case you didn’t know, Madrí Excepcional is “Madrid’s modern-style European cerveza”. Its logo is a man dressed in a traditional chulapo, its advertising is Spanish to its core and its tagline is ‘el alma de Madrid’, meaning the soul of Madrid. It’s an enticing proposition and I’ve been seduced by it on more than one occasion.

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So, imagine my shock when an older kid told me that just like Father Christmas, it’s all a load of made-up bollocks.

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The story goes that Madrí is a unique collaboration with La Sagra, a brewery Molson Coors Beverage Company . Coors bought in 2017, to create “an authentic Spanish lager”.?Dreamy. But there’s a reason Spaniards look confused when you ask them about this beer. It turns out that Madrí has only ever been brewed by Molson Coors at several sites in the UK, including Tadcaster in Yorkshire. A lovely place I’m sure, but not Europe’s sunniest capital city. Furthermore, even if you believe the La Sagra partnership is genuine, it’s a brewery in Toledo, which is 70 miles from Madrid and the beer is not even listed as one of their own products. The rumour that Madrí is simply Coors Light with extra hop extract added to it, might explain their reticence and rival beer Mahou San Miguel ’s claim to be the “Real Taste of Madrid”.

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Maybe all these lies don’t matter, and I should be grateful that I can enjoy an ￡8 pint of Tadcaster’s finest brew in London. Clearly, there are much bigger things in life to worry about and it’s worth mentioning that Madrí is now one of the UK’s biggest selling beers, so Molson Coors shareholders couldn’t be happier. However, the big unanswered question is whether their deception will stand the test of time? Trust can only be achieved when you employ the truth, so for the sake of our industry’s reputation, I hope they end up suffering the same fate as The Conservative Party at the upcoming election. Unfortunately, that’s taken 14 years to achieve, so don’t hold your breath.