Truth in Advertising

“I saw something today that came close to truth in advertising: the DeBeers people are almost saying what they really mean, ’cuz the old DeBeers slogan was ‘Diamonds are forever,’ they changed it to ‘This year, take her breath away.’ The new slogan is ‘Diamonds: render her speechless.’ I mean, why don’t they just go ahead and say it: ‘Diamonds: that’ll shut her up!’” --Ron White

The field of advertising has always fascinated me because of its seemingly ambiguous nature. Whenever you see or hear an advertisement for a given product, you never get the whole truth; a company peddling its wares isn’t about to come right out and tell you all the possible flaws, the poor labor practices, or the more cost-effective alternatives to its merchandise. No, all that you’ll get from an ad is a laundry list of amazing advantages that you can experience when you make one of these things your own. The best kinds of advertisements can convey these benefits without bashing you over the head with them, instead subtly weaving them into an entertaining façade made of some snappy one-liners or an adorable cartoon. An ad for a diamond store would never come right out and say “Diamonds: that’ll shut her up,” even if their target audience is men seeking to subdue their over-talkative wives

Advertising is really nothing more than a condensed version of what we literary types call “Creative Non-Fiction.” Advertisers seek to convey truthful information to their audience in creative way in order to convince them to use a given service or buy a certain product. They need to be witty and artistic comes from the goal of being memorable: when Joe Six-Pack is standing in the beer aisle at the grocery store trying to make a decision, he’s probably going to rely at least in part upon the commercials he saw during last week’s Sunday Night Football game. Making sure that it is your advertisement that Joe remembers is the main goal of the creative process, because in the end, Budweiser and Miller taste pretty much the same.

When a writer sits down to create a memoir, or a personal essay, or to write a biography, they have a multitude of facts on hand from which they can pick and choose to craft a story with a very specific message. In order to keep the reader engaged and the story interesting, the writer might choose some quirky details that are not rely relevant to the central theme, but are good for at least a chuckle. However, in creating a piece of non-fiction, there is one single unbreakable rule: the story begins in reality. Whatever the author writes, they cannot forget that in order to qualify as non-fiction, their piece of writing has to be a truthful account of what really happened.

Of course, there are those that would argue that truth is relative, that in any given situation each person can glean their own version of truth based on their perspective. In this sense, what’s really “true” is incredibly hard to pin down: is there some single, perfect, universal version of the event that transpired that any person can understand? Or is it simply that whatever happens can only be known based upon each individual’s experience of it?

This question is simply too big to say one way or the other whether or not TRUTH (perfect, universal) exists in all cases; however, when it comes to writing a non-fiction story about one’s own personal experience, then truth is in fact subjective. The facts and details the writer has at their disposal is their own memory, and even if they choose to consult other participants in a given experience, they are still going to judge the validity of those peoples’ accounts based upon their own interpretation of what happened.

Advertising is ambiguous for this very reason: the truth that they want to convey to the average consumer is very subjective. Sure, there are a few fail-safes for the consumer: they can always buy whatever was advertised and find out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, or word could come out through some thorough journalistic work that the product contains lead or was made by eight year-olds in Singaporean sweatshop. However, the majority of the time you’ve got to buy it before you find out its broken.

We have to put our trust in advertising, though, because how else are we supposed to find out anything about a given product? The FDA and Consumer Safety Boards can mandate types of labels all they want, but in the end it’s up to the companies to provide us with the full truth about their merchandise, something they may not really want to do, just as some writers are not ready to be entirely honest about their experiences. In either case, it is the spirit with which the author approaches a work that makes all the difference: if they are honestly endeavoring to provide something as close to (big T) Truth as they can manage, then we may let a few errors of memory slide. However, if the author is lax in their adherence to Truth, deliberately trying to skew their subject even from their own truthful memory, then they can hardly call themselves a creator of non-fiction.