BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change at TCBmag.com

I had lunch the other day with a very successful investor and entrepreneur. He came to the United States from Iran as a young teenager. The extreme dichotomy that is Iran is fascinating to say the least—a huge country of well-educated people who, when given the chance to emigrate to the U.S., succeed disproportionately to the population, much like our friends who emigrate from India.

And yet Persians live in a medieval world, governed by strict Shiite theists who employ fear, suppression, and violence to manage both domestic and international relations. So, which is the real Iran? A wild-eyed, blustering Muslim theocracy, or a country of contemporary people living their lives in spite of—and hopefully out of harm’s way of—the unstable demagogues who control power?

My lunch guest says it’s the latter. The only thing missing in Iran then are the massive protests being staged everywhere else across the Middle East, the only real sign of transparency in that world—a revolutionary skirt lift for the heavily “managed” societies of countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Libya.

As we all know, social media has played an unparalleled role in human history by allowing messaging to go viral. All of a sudden the phony hyperbole of governments has been blown wide open by honesty, transparency, and the nagging truth that life is very short.

Closer to home, the decades-long disingenuousness of politicians, CEOs, and other public-facing talking heads is in the midst of a similar evolution. Let’s face it: They’ve mostly been about the bullshit. In fact, I’ve rarely heard a speech or experienced in conversation what smacked of a transparent attempt at candor or honesty from individuals like that. It’s just acting. The only reason it persists to this day is that, for dull, naïve, and gullible people, it still works.

Same goes for broadcast advertising. Somehow we willingly suspend reality as we are exposed to myriad streams of advertising blaring over our TV and radio waves—advertising that aspires to tempt us, cajole us, trick us, distract us, enchant us, and sell us hard. For 100 years or more it worked, making creative directors and agency execs very, very rich. Even today, consumers’ eyes glaze over at thinly disguised advertising posing as ridiculously funny YouTube video candy. Although, bringing that horse to water in order to make him drink has proven problematic. Truth be told, views, likes, and followers have little to do with sales.

Looking back on the more heralded ad campaigns in the past 50 years, it’s almost laughable how thinly veiled hucksterism passed for a “conversation” between product and consumer. I recall CocaCola’s iconic “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” spot. Frankly, CocaCola could have given a damn if the world was singing. What they really wanted was for us to glug down a six-pack a week and feel good about it.

Advertising is at its core a manipulation, the exception being the informational ads mostly found in magazines and newspapers. In an increasingly transparent world, I wonder about its sustainability. Doug Levy and Bob Garfield recently published a fascinating and seminal essay in Advertising Age, titled “The Human Element,” acknowledging the dramatic effect technology and the changing consumer zeitgeist is having on the promotion of products. Suffice it to say, transparency is profoundly changing our world, how we judge people, governments, companies, and products. A time is coming when high utility and engaging content will supplant electronically distributed advertising as the go-to for communicating and relating to consumers. It doesn’t mean creativity, cleverness, or entertainment will be squeezed from the equation. It just means it will become easier to identify useful, meaningful, and honest exchanges between companies and the consuming public.

It’s going to take more than a hummable jingle to convince people they should ingest 50 grams of burpable sugar into their systems, much less teach them all how to sing.

And that, my friends, is a good thing.

Editor’s Note: Gary Johnson is President of MSP Communications in Minneapolis, MN and authors the blog Loose Change.