Recently, I've been reading critiques of marketing successes in the political field.
Martin Kramer shows us how you can use an over-simplified interpretion of the facts to misrepresent them. Here's what he means.
If two percent of your survey sample says they would commit terrorist acts and twenty percent says they strongly agree with those acts, you announce that only a tiny fraction of the people surveyed are extremists.
And we all recently saw a shifty but powerful interpretation of Barack Obama's Jeremiah Wright problem, as well. The press reported that Obama had opened a much needed conversation about race when, in fact, he was merely forced into rationalizing his support for a lunatic mentor.
Hillary ran into problems, however, because in her creative marketing she didn't merely interpret facts, she invented facts about her visit to Bosnia that were very easy to check and, so, was immediately refuted with videos of the actual event .
The lesson: it's easier to lie when you are merely spinning the facts rather than out and out lying about them. And it's easier to lie when the truth about your facts cannot be easily discovered.
