Donald Trump changed so many things. He was the ultimate disruptor. One of his enduring legacies was to demonstrate the ability to communicate with an absence of truth.
He’s not the first and he won’t be the last, but there is no question that in recent times he is the most visible. On 24 January this year, just four days after leaving office, The Washington Post wrote that in his four years in the White House Donald Trump told more than 30,000 lies.
You can’t believe everything you read in the papers, but claims of an average 20 lies a day for 1461 days are pretty hard to ignore.
In crisis management, lying is considered the ultimate ‘no go’ zone. Deal only in the truth is the mantra. But Donald Trump weaponised lying. He turned on its head the basic tenet that liars are not respected. More than 70 million people voted for him despite claims of systemic and habitual lying.
What does that indicate? 70 million people were hoodwinked? 70 million people don’t care about the truth? 70 million people have had their morality disrupted?
The real situation is that in marketing terms – and Trump was a great marketer of Trump – the lines between the brand (Trump) and the audience (70 million Americans) were blurred. People see brands as an extension of themselves and for 70 million Americans, Trump’s success was an extension of their own ambitions.
In marketing terms, Trump didn’t have a strategy. He just had a purpose. That purpose was to get elected, stay in power and get re-elected. When he didn’t get re-elected he still clung to his purpose of staying in power. Purpose overtook strategy and he just plugged away without concern for the truth or the consequences. And a fair percentage of the population attached their thinking to Trump’s purpose.
His purpose became a megatrend and he didn’t need a strategy.
Potentially, this has huge consequences for issues and crisis management and we are seeing greater acceptance by the public and the media of lying as a legitimate tactic. There is less pushback against lying.
The public and the media might question claims by mining companies that the destruction of a heritage site was a mistake, or that the vaccine rollout is not compromised or that the banks were unaware they were enabling terrorists to transfer money or that a casino was unaware that criminals were laundering cash or that taking government aid money and returning this as dividends to shareholders was perfectly legitimate.
But soon their enthusiasm and curiosity die down. The perpetrators avoid the truth, they lie and lie low for a while and the problem goes away. It appears that lying has become a legitimate tactic in crisis management.
That changes the game. You can lie your way out of a crisis.
Legitimately, the crisis manager can now ask: “Can we get away with lying?”. And there are now plenty of precedents to suggest that this is a workable tactic.
Purpose trumps strategy. And the audience sees the success of the brand as an extension of themselves.
“They did it, they lied and they got away with it!”
That’s not a strategy we employ at Wrights and it never will be, but the world has changed and for many lying is a legitimate and acceptable tactic.
