In a relatively recent commercial for Infiniti, the announcer says: “If no one ever challenged the status quo, the Earth would still be flat…” Um, that’s a gross misrepresentation. The Earth never was flat, regardless of what people used to think, so it could hardly still be flat; and even if everyone still thought it was flat, it would still actually be round. And the funny thing is, pretty much everyone knows it’s round, so we can all recognize that they’re completely misrepresenting this issue. And if they’re willing to say something so universally recognizable as false in their commercials, then what arcane facts most people aren’t familiar with are they not lying about?
See the problem here? When you make a statement that’s so obviously false in your commercial, it instantly makes people who were paying attention think you must be lying about lots of other stuff too, and then you destroy your credibility. And so the moral of this story is, when you’re writing such a small amount of copy for an ad, please make sure it isn’t worded in such a way as to breed suspicion about your honesty and the veracity of all your other claims. (And even if viewers don’t question your honesty, they’ll at least be distracted by this opening statement’s problems, and they’ll miss the message of the commercial, which just makes the whole thing a big waste of time and money.)
It's too bad, especially since it would have been so easy to write this copy in such a way as to be accurate and helpful, rather than inaccurate and harmful to the brand. All they had to do was say: “If no one ever challenged the status quo, people might still think the Earth was flat…” (Or to avoid admitting they were ever wrong, maybe they could make a new ad, with Thomas Friedman, so he could hold up his book: The World Is Flat, and then they could argue that his book’s premise is what they meant all along. And maybe then they wouldn’t look so silly. Or would they look even sillier?) And this problematic issue is a real shame, because the concept for this ad is actually pretty good and engaging. If only it weren't for that badly worded opening sentence. Then it might be an effective spot. (Oh well...)
Here’s the commercial chicanery:
In looking for this commercial, I ran into this blog post, which raises the same issue (but for a different purpose):
