marketingmag.com.au94 SHIFT
Our fake reality
Fake products, fake lives, fake faces. Technology has enabled
reality to be softened, bent and broken, but it is also the
double-edged sword marketers can use to bring back truth,
says Steve Sammartino.
T
he truth, as humans
perceive it, is in a constant
state of fl ux. It used to be
true that the sun went
around the earth... until around 500
years ago. The telescope, new
technology at the time, reframed
what we knew to be true. Even after
Copernicus, people such as
Giordano Bruno were burned at the
stake for promoting what was then
regarded as cultural heresy. It was
heresy because it unsettled the
existing system, and those in power
generally don’t like change. Our truth
is shaped not just by new
discoveries, ideas and possibilities,
but also mostly by our perception
and what we deem to be acceptable
to believe in.
Technology makes new things
possible that were once not just
impossible, but indistinguishable
from magic. When I’m asked
what I believe to be the most
incredible technology of all time,
it’s not something that’s come
along recently. For me it’s air
travel. While digital technology has
been transformative to the global
economy, and is on the precipice
of the unimaginable, it isn’t there
yet. It feels in many ways like a
rational extension from analogue
communication technologies. Mail to
email. Broadcast TV to narrowcastMARKETING 2019Steve Sammartino
is an author, futurist, speaker
and Marketing columnist.live video on a phone. It feels like
everything is just smaller and faster- but not unbelievable. If we went
back in time, say 100 years and
explained our current technology,
I’m sure that person would fi nd it
plausible, maybe even inevitable.
Now compare that to
international travel on a jet liner.
Sitting in air-conditioned comfort,
on a chair in the sky, 10 kilometres
above the ground, sipping a beer,
watching a movie, to arrive on the
other side of the earth in under
a day. That is something anyone
from 1850 would have found very
diffi cult to believe if you went back
in time to tell them about the future
of travel. It would have been an
inconceivable idea. Never to be true - maybe even fake news.
What we perceive to be fake,
possible and eventually real
changes over time. Often a product
will move through that spectrum
as if it is a fantasy of what we’d like
to have – like the ability to fl y. First
we imagine it, often for many years,
behind a phrase such as ‘Wouldn’t
it be cool if...’ and eventually, we
fi nd a way to make it technologically
possible. The fantasy becomes
the truth – especially in times of
exponential change.
In a branded sense, conversely,
this pattern often moves in the