Customer Reviews

Truth: The New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World

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"In marketing, credibility is like air: You can't see it, taste it or touch it, but you'll find out very fast if you're running short," says Lynn Upshaw in Truth: The New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World (AMACOM, May 2007).

In Truth, company leaders and marketers alike are urged to build and market products from a foundation of integrity and ethics, ultimately gaining respect and trust from today's oh-so-skeptical consumer. With examples of leading companies taking the high road such as Patagonia, Trader Joe's, and Infosys, Upshaw demonstrates how companies can increase brand loyalty, employee satisfaction, and ultimately revenue streams through a principled approach to everything from leadership to product development. To bolster practical integrity at your company, Truth will show you how to analyze your "COMA" (Cost of Marketing Atrophy), build an integrity impact report and promote internal integrity through workshops and awards programs at all levels from leadership to product development - and of course, marketing.

Truth: The New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World by Lynn Upshaw (Amacom, 2007) is one of the few books I've seen that really addresses ethics from a marketing point of view.

Upshaw argues convincingly that companies should be ethical, transparent, and engage in what he calls "practical integrity" (which in his view has more to do with product quality and service than with the "traditional" integrity issues). He repeatedly cites the same examples (among them Timberland, Trader Joe's, John Deere, Herman Miller and Patagonia)-and shows how these companies reap handsome rewards in the marketplace because of, not in spite of, this commitment. Unfortunately, with a pub date of 2007, the book was probably written in 2005-and a couple of his examples (Whole Foods, with its CEO sock puppeting, and Southwest, with its recent inspection issues) have been somewhat tarnished in the meantime. This is always a danger when writing about ethics; I've been burned a couple of times, as well, and I don't hold a grudge that the facts changed since Upshaw turned in his manuscript.

Upshaw makes many excellent points. Among my favorites:

* 6 characteristics of "integrity heavy-users"
* Quantification in dollars and other metrics of the consequences to Ford and Firestone of their stupidity in the Explorer rollover scandal
* The idea that great employees actively seek out great companies to work for (Upshaw doesn't elaborate, but to me, that means these companies have much lower recruiting expenses)
* A tarnished brand can, with effort, rehabilitate itself (example: a few years ago, Gap was widely condemned for its use of sweatshops and child labor; now, the company actually pits vendors against each other to show who has improved working conditions the most)
* In one of several appendices, a sample "integritomter" showing how a company can rank itself for promises kept, guarantees honored, and other factors.

A couple of minor negatives: I found some of the visuals and sidebars (particularly the invented conversations) distracting and irrelevant-and I found it deeply ironic that the cover flap (which I'm sure the author didn't write)-engages in exactly the same sort of unfounded claim that he chastises other companies for: "The first book of its kind, Truth takes a practical business-building approach to marketing with integrity.

While Upshaw is writing more for a corporate audience and less for the small entrepreneur, I covered much of the same ground in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First, published a full four years earlier. And in the nearly four years I've been writing this column, I've reviewed several others that also cover this territory.

Despite these minor flaws, this book is a rich collection of values/profit-oriented advice, and I definitely recommend it.

Lynn Upshaw's "Truth" should be everyone's truth! This is the pragmatic marketing book with a soul. It isn't a book just for marketers, it's for the whole of organizations to read, from CEOs to CFOs to sales teams to HR departments and strategy groups. I can even think of two political parties that could benefit from its teachings... The perfect book at the right time.

Lynn Upshaw focused on a supremely important aspect of brand management in his earlier book, The Masterbrand Mandate. He has done it again with Truth: a valuable experiment in Aristotelian phronesis, or "practical integrity."

The goals of this book are lofty: to define what is fundamentally right and good in the best practices of contemporary marketing; and help marketers bring their imperfect practices into line.

As someone who is focused on organizational effectiveness, I find this compelling. Mr. Upshaw makes a strong business case for practical integrity, and shows how crucial ordinary people are to achieving it.

I recommend you read this book with Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters. Another complementary study is Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance. These books and Truth will reinforce what of what Leonard Berry has said: if customers are attracted to your business by advertising, and find that the experience of your business doesn't match your advertising, they will ALWAYS believe their experience, and not your advertising.

As a professional copywriter, I know how often products and services are built up by the ad department. They sound like the answer to the problems of the world. People fight over the product like a girdle in a bargain bin in the fifties.

But then, people discover the product doesn't live up to what they were led to believe.

Well, this book shows how honest marketing is good marketing, profitable marketing. It's a rather unique approach in the world today.

I recommend this book to you.

Finally - a masterful marketing book with a soul and a conscience, at precisely the moment when the world is begging for both. Truth is a crucially important look at truth as the essence of win-win marketing, and is not only richly instructive but also utterly liberating for marketers. Why? Because in it we learn anew this truth about the truth: it's good for business. And it turns out that being honest may even be better than being perfect (not to mention more attainable). Upshaw makes a persuasive business case for the truth, with case after compelling case stacking up the evidence that truth protects margins, brand equity, future cash flows, and even protects the earth and the environment shared by customers and marketers alike. When reading the book, I couldn't help thinking how marketers have evolved to living in a bubble shielded from truth, and Upshaw reconnects us all to the reality of our place in the world as marketers, our responsibility, and our impact on a larger atmosphere than buying and selling. But unlike a mere pundit, the author supplies strategies for converting truth to bottom-line advantage, embodied in practical concepts like "Return on Marketing Integrity" and an exploration of the correlation between trust and value. And finally, just when you think you're on top of the truth, the book ends with a thoughtful and provocative "marketing ethics quiz" that will challenge you to re-think what you believe about yourself and your business relationship to truth and integrity. Highly recommended reading for any business professional who wants to profit from doing the right thing in a post-Enron world.

In TRUTH, Lynn Upshaw makes a convincing case for companies to close the gap between what products promise and what they actually deliver. He clearly shows the connection between a corporate commitment to integrity and increased brand equity.

Upshaw not only provides practical strategies for marketers, but also includes several case studies --Herman Miller, Patagonia, Trader Joe's -- of integrity in action. You'll learn firsthand how these companies placed integrity and authenticity above quick profits and short-term market share. By truly respecting their customers, these companies have built brands to last.

Marketers will find this book to be an enjoyable read and a required addition to their business bookshelf. But TRUTH is also a useful reference guide that should be consulted for marketing best practices in an integrity-challenged world.

As Upshaw reminds us, it's not simply a product you're marketing, it's your word.

This book is an easy read that addresses the topic in a user friendly way. Glad we bought it!