A discussion about business ethics, character traits, integrity, and values

In case there was any doubt, my friend Maria Palma at customersarealways has proclaimed that marketers are, in fact, liars. It may not be universally true, but there is enough evidence to make that stereotype valid.

The example Maria uses is that she received a post card from Bill about home loans. When she called and asked for Bill, as instructed, she was told that Bill was no more than a moniker – "just the generic name we use for those postcards."

I suspect this company used the name Bill to help identify which ad Maria was responding to. We used to do that, put several recruiting ads in several papers, if someone asked for Alice, we knew that person was calling from an ad in a certain newspaper. Some of us were never comfortable with the plan, especially when new recruits would arrive and expect to meet Alice. It always made us look bad, and must have hurt the trust level of our new people. As Maria points out, how could they know we would not lie to them sooner or later?