Any good salesman or marketing specialist knows and understands that the critical element to any successful campaign is the inclusion of a truth that has the power to eclipse all the other factors that may otherwise create red flags or food for thought that the more discerning buyer will certainly want time to think about.
It doesn’t matter what the truth is and how extraordinarily small it might be. The truth they use only has to be the one that reaches in where other truths cannot, so that it can create emotional buy-in that can overcome logic, whilst painting a very clear picture of a highly desirable outcome that the audience simply must have.
Whilst it will be much easier to relate this process to something like buying a car and what must be acknowledged as the marketing brilliance which has resulted in perhaps millions of us parting with our cash or more likely getting credit to secure the new car that we felt we must have, the reality is that the dynamics of this selling equation and the creation of buy-in is something that actually plagues us all across every area of our lives too.
Before anything else, it is important to recognise that the truth; what the truth is to us; what the truth is to everyone;and then what the genuine, real or absolute truth is, beyond that, can all be very different things. Whilst at the same time for each of us as individuals, any of these can seem very real – and therefore very true indeed.
Truth at the personal level often becomes synonymous with what the individual considers to be right or correct.
What is right can for any of us can in turn be as simple as a desirable outcome that answers the question, solves the problem or breaks down the barrier that the individual or a group of them together have in mind.
Of course, the greatest salesman or marketer knows that the biggest pay days will inevitably come from creating a question to answer, the solution to a problem or a bulldozer to blitz a barrier that the buyer didn’t even realise or know was actually there and needing to be addressed in the first place – but suddenly became a life-changing necessity, in the very same moment that they found out all about it – with the help of their narrative or advert.
The story or stories and the role that created ‘need’ has played in so much and with such wild implications throughout the ages of commercialism, media channels and now the digital world, are certainly something that we should all deeply consider.
However, it is the role of these forms of deliberate manipulation that have and are increasingly being used to sway public opinion – both by those within and against the establishment – that should concern us most and they have enormous potential to harm everyone and push everything into a new type of world, created on fearful beliefs, where there is no way for anyone to step back.
Ironically, the establishment know that the real truth about most things in life, isn’t all that attractive to normal people.
Dangling carrots and carefully crafted stories of greener grass that suggest an easy grab or on open gate if you do or buy whatever they say will inevitably seem much more attractive to the alternative. Which at immediate glance may appear gloomy, require effort, or a leap of faith in some way.
The number of policies, products and outcomes that have been sold to generations of us in this way – whether that be together, in groups or as individuals, is mind boggling.
Yet it’s not just the establishment and their pet politicians who manipulate and yes – brain wash us in this way.
With the media age has come the phenomenon which is the influencer. Meaning that even the most vacuous of speakers can win over the captive audience, which is you or I, from the screen that’s right in front of us. Just because they have said or done something or belonged to something that we like; they are already popular and followed by ‘our group’; or we have just decided that we like them and therefore want to listen to or watch them – as this somehow brings them and more of what we like straight into our lives.
Contrary to the generally accepted view, influencers aren’t just beautiful people or the people who entertain and ‘connect’ with us from the digital universe.
Influencers are politicians, commentators, journalists and all the would-be politicians and people who have designs on being the next Prime Minister of the UK or President of the Universe too.
It is also not uncommon for accidental influencers to hit the sweet spot of a message that plays to someone or some groups ‘truth’ too. As the example of a tweet that I saw just this morning demonstrates rather well, where someone I have never heard of has flagged a government contract award for contingency planning as something needing to be questioned. It was then picked up and run with by others as an ‘obvious’ sign that there are plans afoot for dealing with future events that indicate a government engaging in forward planning must mean that it has already planned something very sinister for us all.
The ‘truth’ for some, in this particular instance, has quickly pole-vaulted straight over the reality that central government, local government and many of the statutory organisations paid for by the taxpayer, that we see and experience in our lives each and every day, have to make plans for managing all sorts of eventualities. Just in case the worst events imaginable but nonetheless feasible should suddenly come into view.
The problem here, which illustrates the situation well, is that although this is a very specific suggested plan on the part of those tweeting and interpreting the information this way, what they are referring to is indeed a fixed government plan. And the fact that the government are indeed planning ahead for an operation or activity that could fit a range of different possibilities, that could of course include the one suggested, does nonetheless create the presence of truth – no matter how partial, fractional or ultimately inaccurate it may or may not turn out to be.
Whilst I tackled the topic of the dangers from self-fulfilling prophecies and todays false prophets a few days ago, the agents of change and however they got into that position are not themselves the message, answer, nor the outcome they might either suggest or lead so many of us to conclude.
The problem that we now have with messaging and narratives is that our castles of reality are being built upon the moving sands of weed covered fictions that look real because they are being deliberately or accidently sprinkled with expansive truths from whichever source we have decided we can trust.
That problem would be easier to tackle if this bogus reality was one that we could all agree upon and the question was as simple as shining a light on what’s really going on in every direction, which to all intents and purposes might be better labelled as being everyone’s inconvenient truths.
Unfortunately, it’s not.
With the wide and growing range of different truths that are being created and shared by different sources in every direction that we now look, the biggest challenge that anyone or rather that we all face, if we want to get back to being adults and tackling the real issues that need to be solved so that its ok for us all to relax and genuinely enjoy life, is that solving the problem of just one mistruth doesn’t solve any problem at all. Because there is an equally truthful take on the problem or answer walking up the algorithmic pathway right behind the one that is already knocking on our information gateway door.
There is an answer. But it really is an inconvenient truth that a lot of us aren’t going to like.
Adam Tugwell 