When Naming Turns Deceitful

Steve RivkinFebruary 5, 20091 min

Should marketing be persuasive? Of course. Put its best foot forward? Sure. But actually mislead and deceive the consumer? No!

There’s an alarming rise in this sort of deception in naming.

  • The Hilton London Kensington Hotel is nowhere near the museums and chic shops associated with the Kensington district. (It’s actually in Holland Park, in far west London.)
  •  Book a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Beverly Hills and you might naively assume you’d be staying in Beverly Hills. Wrong. The hotel is more than a mile away in Los Angeles.

It gets worse when special interests groups hide behind dubious and misleading names.

  • The Center for Consumer Freedom calls America’s obesity problem “hype.” Maybe heavy eaters should know the center is heavily funded by restaurants and food companies.
  •  The Institute of Historical Review is actually a publisher of articles denying the Holocaust.
  • Citizens for Better Medicare is actually a group funded by drugmakers that ran ads against price controls on medicines.
  • Americans Coming Together actually brought together liberal, labor-backed groups that worked to get Democrats to the polls.
  • Republicans for Clean Air are actually supporters of George W. Bush who ran ads attacking Sen. John McCain during the 2000 GOP primaries.

USA Today editorialized as follows: “A rose by any other name may smell as sweet. A special interest group with a deceptive name? That just stinks.”

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Steve Rivkin

2 comments

  • Denis Baldwin

    February 5, 2009 at 6:19 am

    This reminds me of the long running Comedy Central skit on the Daily Show about names.

    “The Center for Consumer Freedom… or NAMBLA…”

  • jwo

    February 5, 2009 at 7:19 am

    Kinda like a stimulus package full of pork?

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