Why Attractive People Are The Most Dangerous People In The World
Plutonium, swoon-inducing MPs, and fish: it’s all here.
What is it about hot people and fish?
Those familiar with online dating will know the term ‘catfishing’ — the creation of a false desirable identity to entice the vulnerable into providing favours and finance.
Then there’s flirty fishing — in which cults and marginalised religious groups use good-looking zealots as recruiters/prostitutes in order to boost members (so to speak…).
Why does this work? Well, like the angler’s fly, people of significant attractiveness are successful at luring. That’s what makes them such great poster kids for whatever cause they’re backing.
Case in point: Welsh Tory, Fay Jones — MP for Brecon and Radnorshire. She is everything I admire about strong feminity (even I’m intrigued as to how a post-Brexit trade deal with the US could benefit Mid-Wales).
***Warning! Warning!***
While certainly no Maybot-in-the-making — and a tireless campaigner for deftly balancing tradition and modernity for her rural constituents — Ms Jones ostensibly beats the drum of True Blue rhetoric (albeit with a charming Celtic lilt and the best of intentions).
But it makes no chuffing difference: I find myself innately sympathetic to her concerns — to the extent that I can almost overlook her adherence to the privileged pomp of Bumbling Boris.
And so it is with marketing. The more appealing aspects of a functioning organisation are put front and centre — to obscure the more troubled parts.
But — as The Last Leg team would no doubt ask — is it ok?
While it’s easy to call bullshit on some brands’ activities, others are harder to pinpoint.
However, I think there’s a difference between ‘marketing’ and ‘masketing’.
Setting out your stall to showcase the positive attributes of your brand is business-critical. But doing that purely for the purpose of directing attention away from the fact there’s something inherently wrong with what your company is doing is bad juju (recall cutesy Mr Pluto — Japan’s kawaii proponent of plutonium-friendliness/oral ingestion – ?).
What should marketers do when it’s glaringly obvious their brand has an image problem?
Hiding behind cartoon smokescreens or swoon-inducing Members of Parliament is all very well and good — but it’s the braver, and ultimately more authentic brand that can hold up its hands up and admit when it’s wrong. And honesty and authenticity are two of the most attractive qualities any brand can have.
Consider events from earlier this month, when the afore-mentioned Ms. Jones retracted a well-intentioned, yet ill-conceived tweet about Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Instead of merely deleting it, she apologised for any offence caused and admitted she needed to learn more about the topic.
Maybe there is hope for the Tories yet (but then I would say that). And I have a sudden hankering for leeks and lamb.
