Untrue.

Late last week, I decided to start a game. Or at least an experiment.

I would count all the lies I was hit with every day. Automatic lies like an Alexa saying good morning, trying to convince you through a linguistic conceit of its humanity. Or lies of overblown salesmanship like a YouTube video saying it’s a complete film when it’s really just a clip. A 73-second clip that demands you watch 180-seconds of commercials.

Even autocorrect, which promises one thing and delivers another, I’d count as a lie. Who are they, a mere algorithm, suggesting they know better than I do what I intend to write. What's more, predictive text is very non-New York. How dare you lie about your intelligence then auto-misspell "oy vey" to "it vets," or "mazel tov" to "madeline too."

As a concession to the work I get paid to do, I’d stop counting each day when I got to 100. This would let me end the game likely before 10 AM and let me get on with life. 

I wouldn't count lies from politicians if they were promises in good faith. Or promises that could be accomplished by policy and luck. But when a liar says, "I'll end inflation on day one," especially when that liar is a seven-time bankrupt and the president has no power to "stop" inflation, that I'd count as a lie. It's a blatant attempt to fool people.

I wouldn’t count lies of interpretation unless they were egregious. So if my wife said to me, you look thin, I won’t count that. I have lost weight. If however she ever says, you have washboard abs, I’ll count that. Right after our divorce.

Mostly (because there are so many of them--trying to ignore them is like trying to fight a land-war in Asia) I'll be tallying ads and notices like these, a fairly random sampling from nine minutes on LinkedIn. 

They're advertising writ by Polonius. William Hazlitt described Polonius as "a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent​." Others describe him as a "foolish prating knave" and a windbag. Shakespeare​ himself sums him up as a "tedious old fool." I can't be the only one who sees ads and statements and regards them like this.

I also here have to fault what's left of the trade press who have be completely derelict and complicit in their current coverage of the ad industry. As once giant ad complexes like BBDO or Ogilvy have shrunk from employing thousands of people, to the point today where they employ just hundreds, this news has not at all be covered. Instead ginned up awards and fake ads and non-news like this.

This is like reporting from a battlefield where 50,000 have died and writing a story about the soldier with the neatest tent.

I suppose the point in all this is that we're living in a Poloniusian world. As an industry, we have to be better than this. We have to know when we're lying. And we have to know that everyone else knows too.

In a trumpler world where no one can any longer distinguish what's real from what's fake, we as ad people and our clients have to try to be better, truer, honester.

Honest in everything a brand says, does and shows. Including from what used to be agency brands. Including what are today disgustedly called personal brands.

If a brand is a promise to a consumer, we have to make sure that our promises are built on trust and truth, not dust and bushwa.

That's our job.

Thank you for your time today.

It means the world to me.

Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies.