The lies we enjoy
Take The Traitors. It’s a show built entirely on deception, and that’s exactly why people watch it. Nobody’s tuning in expecting honesty. The fun is in watching people mistake confidence for innocence, likeability for trustworthiness, and gut instinct for proof. That’s not just good TV. It’s recognisable human behaviour.
People aren’t nearly as good at spotting lies as they think they are. We rely on cues that feel persuasive. Who seems calm. Who feels believable. Who fits the story we’ve already started building in our heads. That matters for marketing because brands aren’t judged in a cold, rational way either. They’re judged through the same messy filters. Familiarity. Coherence. Confidence. ‘Vibe’.
But enjoying deception is one thing. What’s more interesting is when people start helping to build it.
The lies we indulge
That’s where celebrity culture gets useful. Take Zendaya’s recent press tour for The Drama. The film leans into weddings and relationships, and Law Roach said the fashion story for the tour was built around “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” At the same time, marriage rumours around Zendaya and Tom Holland were already circulating. So you end up with a very modern kind of narrative where nothing’s confirmed, but there’s more than enough there for people to join the dots themselves.
That’s what makes it work. It’s not a blatant lie. It’s ambiguity where people are invited to fill the gaps. And I think that’s the shift. People don’t just consume these stories anymore. They co-author them.
But this is also where it can break. When celebrity chemistry gets pushed too hard, audiences switch quickly. The backlash around the recent Wuthering Heights promo is a good example. Commentary around Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi framed it as overcooked and fake PR.
Same mechanism, very different reaction.
People will go along with a version of reality when it feels playful or low stakes. They push back when it feels like they’re being handled. And that same dynamic doesn’t stay in celebrity culture.
Another example of a lie I’m personally indulging in at the moment is using pinterest when wedding planning. More and more of what you’re looking at isn’t real. It’s AI-generated florals, tablescapes and lighting setups that don’t exist in reality. The issue isn’t that anyone’s lying. It’s that the reference point shifts. You start comparing real suppliers to something that was never constrained by budget, materials or even the laws of physics in the first place. And that has a knock-on effect. The people actually doing the work get judged against something that was never achievable to begin with.
It’s not a lie anyone told. It’s a standard that was never real. Which is also why authenticity has become such a strange answer to all of this.
The authenticity tactic
The industry’s answer to mistrust has been authenticity. Be more real. Be more human. Feel less polished. But authenticity now has its own codes.
The clearest one is Get Ready With Me content. It’s meant to feel casual, chatty, low effort. Just someone talking while they do their makeup or make a coffee. But it’s become its own script. Same pacing. Same tone. Same “I wasn’t even going to share this” energy. It isn’t raw anymore. It’s a format. The ASA says many people still struggle to tell when influencer content is advertising, especially in fast-moving feeds where they’re relying on tone, visuals and context. It also says most people want influencer ads clearly labelled. Which tells you two things. Authenticity is now a tactic. And people know it. That’s why the bigger risk now isn’t looking polished. It’s looking like you’re trying to get away with something.
The lies we reject
This is where the mood changes. AI scams. Deepfakes. Fraud. This isn’t playful ambiguity. It isn’t something you opt into. It’s deception that takes control away from the audience.
Research from the University of Arizona, based on 13 experiments with more than 5,000 participants, found that people trusted work less when they knew AI had been used. There’s a catch though. Undisclosed AI use could be even more damaging if people found out later. The point isn’t that disclosure is bad and secrecy is good. It’s that AI has made trust more fragile.
You can see that in the backlash to McDonald’s Netherlands pulling its AI-generated Christmas ad after criticism online. The issue wasn’t just how it looked. It was also what the choice signalled.
The Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann saga gets at the same thing from a different angle. ‘Netflix’s Untold: Chess Mates’ has put that scandal back into culture, and the reason it cuts through is obvious. Once deception threatens the fairness of the system itself, it stops being entertaining ambiguity and starts feeling like a breach.
That’s the distinction that matters. People aren’t anti-deception. They’re anti being played. And that doesn’t stop at culture.
What does it mean for marketing?
The Advertising Association’s Credos Trust Tracker found that trust in advertising reached 40% in 2025, the highest level in five years. But the more useful finding was what drives distrust. Suspicious advertising became a bigger factor in 2025, including scams, misleading ads, undisclosed ads, greenwashing and manipulated imagery. So it isn’t persuasion itself that people object to. It’s the feeling that something’s trying to get away with something.
The authenticity research points the same way. A 2026 paper found that authentic brands outperform inauthentic ones, but don’t outperform a neutral baseline. Authenticity doesn’t really behave like a reward. It behaves like the baseline. People are quicker to punish you for feeling false than they are to reward you for feeling real.
And this doesn’t stay neatly in consumer culture. In B2B, where decisions are higher stakes and easier to scrutinise, the same trust gap becomes even more obvious. LinkedIn and Ipsos’ Trust Advantage research, based on a global survey of nearly 900 B2B buyers, found that 94% of buyers now use AI in the purchase process, while only 45% describe the sellers they encounter as trustworthy. It also found that 86% say seller expertise drives trust.
Which in practice means information isn’t much of an edge anymore. Everyone can look informed. The harder bit is being believed. When information is cheap, credibility becomes the asset.
So what does that mean for marketing?
It means the job isn’t to pretend spin doesn’t exist. And it isn’t to perform authenticity harder. It’s to understand which kind of fiction you sell. Is it kind people opt into, co-author and enjoy? Or the kind that quietly changes the rules on them without asking?
Because there’s no recovery from the second one if they figure it out. You don’t get to explain your way back from being the brand that treated its audience like a problem to be managed rather than a person with agency to be persuaded.
The question isn’t whether you’re deceiving anyone.
It’s whether they’d feel cheated if they knew.
