FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Mic Torbay : I’m Mic Torbay from Wizard of Ads, Toronto, and this is number eight in our series, 10 marketing mistakes your competitors are making right now every day and how you can use it to your advantage. Their screw up is your path to success. Here’s mistake number eight, telling people what you think they want to hear instead of telling them the truth. I know what you’re thinking. This is advertising, right? Where does the truth enter into this? Okay, stop chuckling about how clever you are. I’m trying to make you some money here. Okay. Advertising that has no connection with the truth is not effective. It does not serve you. It is easily identified and easily dismissed. Do you ignore most advertising? Yes. That’s because I’m right and so many companies make this mistake. Let’s talk examples. When I met a certain client of mine, his company had trouble getting projects done on time and he had the reviews to prove it late, later, late again.

Mic Torbay : They did excellent work, but they were always a little bit later than the customer expected. So what was his response? We need to run ads saying we are never late. And he had the headlines already written for me. Always on time, always on budget. This is a construction company. They’re almost never on time and rarely on budget. That’s just the nature of the business. But this is, my client was convinced what the customer wanted to hear, so he wanted to say it. But here’s where most ad companies and mine diverge. When a client tells an ad guy what he wants to say, the easiest thing in the world is to go, “Okay, let’s do that.” Makes for a great meeting. Everybody agrees. They pay you in advance, all is right with the world. Clients don’t like being told no. It makes for a bad meeting. Want to make the client happy, give them what they want. Want to make the client money, give them what they need.

Mic Torbay : And often that’s a swift kick in the reality-bone. You see, my partners and I are not paid by the amount of work we do. We are paid by how much we grow our client’s business. So it’s not in my best interest to do as I’m told. It’s in my best interest to do what will make the client succeed financially, with money coming into his bank account. Does that make sense to you? So guess what we didn’t do? We didn’t tell people we’re always on time and always on budget because we’re not. Not then anyway. He’s done a lot of work fixing that problem and now they’re almost always on time. But not always, almost. So we don’t talk about that. We’re not hanging our reputation on something we’re not good at. You’d be amazed at how often businesses want to talk about what they’re not good at and pretend that they are. It’s not a winning strategy. And if your competitors are doing it, and they probably are, they are slowly, quietly hanging themselves.

Mic Torbay : So what you’re going to do is, you’re going to find someone else, not you, not your staff, someone from outside your organization. If you want, I’ll do it or one of my partners. Uncover what you’re actually good at and talk about nothing but that and you’ll crush your competitor like a cheap soda can. I’m Mic Torbay from Wizard of Ads, Toronto making the world a better place, one commercial at a time.