
Yet another so-called ‘viral marketing’ campaign that uses a blatant lie as its main, cost-free tool. Yes, the latest YesMadam campaign follows the spectacular misfire by the agency Schbang and Poonam Pandey earlier this year.
I had written about why that campaign was horrendously wrong (along with a list of other such campaigns that use a misleading/lie as the main tactic), so I’m not going to dwell on it again. But allow me to articulate once again why this YesMadam campaign is wrong on multiple levels.
Where do I even start?
Ok, let me start with the intent. I’m sure the intent was to make YesMadam the name a LOT of Indians know/recall with the least amount of money. In this case, the budget for this campaign is rupees zero. Just one employee—Anushka Dutta—was asked to share a screenshot of a purported internal email (with a HR person’s name prominently mentioned in it – Ashu Arora Jha).

Isn’t this ‘tool’ (that is, faking something that did not happen) available to every brand with a similar intent? Why do you think all those brands did not use this tactic to jumpstart visibility nationally in a few hours with zero rupees spent as budget?
Because this tactic is the equivalent of getting your CEO to run naked on the street. It’s guaranteed to make news because of a simple reason – shock value: “Start-up CEO runs naked outside company headquarters!”. Who wouldn’t be interested to see the news and wonder what happened to the CEO and why they are running naked? It’s basic human nature to be curious about such an anomaly.
Firing people who mentioned that they are stressed about the working conditions in a company, in a survey designed to understand organizational stress, is an anomaly too. It will obviously make news because of how preposterously stupid and ridiculous it is.
If it had come from the brand handle, we all would have simply laughed at it and considered it as a crude joke, at best… if there was a footer which reveals that it was in service of YesMadam’s corporate wellness program.
But there was no footer, and it was not shared by the brand. The brand intended it to be as “real” as possible so that we take it seriously and fall for the rage-bait. So, the vehicle used to deliver the lie was an employee’s personal LinkedIn handle! More on this in this last point, below.
The point is that no sane, decent, conscientious person would indulge in this blatant an attempt at lying for the sake of generating shock value. Just like no sane, decent, conscientious person would run naked on the street just for shock value. The only reason why they may still indulge is if they mistakenly thought the ends justified the (any) means.
What stops anyone from NOT indulging in such blatantly false shock-value tactics in the name of marketing? The reason is rather simple – that it is wrong to mislead people with something false, no matter what the justification.
So, next, let us address the justification I see on some quarters. Consider Jaison’s justification as a standard template for all such justification: “Till yesterday, I had no clue the brand existed. Today, I do. Meaning: Campaign superhit!”.

Sure, a lot more people would be aware about YesMadam’s existence, but why presume that all those who know of YesMadam today would also trust the brand to deliver their services adequately or appropriately? Visibility is not equal to consideration. Also, more importantly, consider the route in which all those people are now aware of the brand’s existence: that brand that lied that it fired over 100 people as part of a fake marketing stunt. Not a good introduction, eh?
Also, take the ‘you won’t care for online sentiment’ quip from Jaison. He did argue by citing a lot of other large global companies like Meta and Uber that continue doing business after lying horribly through corporate crises. The logic was that we continue to use Instagram and Uber cabs despite the negative sentiment around the corporate blunders. Fair point. Just that those examples are not personal use products/services. And whole swathes of people are not discovering Uber or Meta for the first time after they were caught lying (that is, their first introduction to the brands). In YesMadam’s case, the Google Trends spike is that of people becoming freshly aware of the brand because it supposedly fired 100 employees after they pointed out they were stressed. They did not discover YesMadam as a brand that a friend suggested is an excellent service or an ad which promised something better/more than a rival like Urban (Clap).
And if the ‘ends’ are the only thing that matters, the ‘means’ can be anything, if we use YesMadam as a template. What next? A candid-camera video of two employees (complete with formal clothing, office lanyards, etc.) physically fighting on the road on day 1, and the day 2 reveal of them becoming calm, seated next to each other, after a de-stress session by YesMadam? Why not up the gore quotient? How about an employee of YesMadam sharing a LinkedIn post about a senior manager trying to strangle a family member after a tough day at work, on day 1, and the day 2 reveal being that it was all just part of a campaign – no one tried to strangle anyone? The sky is the limit if we start justifying ends with any kind of means.
Think about it: if Yes Madam can lie blatantly for a marketing stunt, imagine what else they may lie to us about! The kind of ingredients they use in the products they apply on us, may be? The kind of charges they take from us and what they give their professional partners, perhaps? Or, in case of a dispute on a charge? Or, the sensitive data they leak about their customers and partners? Oops, the last one is actually a real news from 2023!

Extending the ‘CEO runs naked’ analogy, sure… a lot more people would be aware of a company whose CEO ran naked outside the company the day after. But would it naturally lead them to consider its products or services, which require a very different kind of communication?
Third, let me address the monumental difficulty people seem to be having in differentiating between ‘exaggeration’ and ‘lying’.
Exaggeration is a very powerful tool used in advertising. It’s the art of stretching the truth for dramatic, entertaining effect. When AXE deo shows a scrawny teen becoming a magnet (literally) of women around him just because he uses their deo, they are exaggerating the notion of the user becoming attractive to the opposite sex. Does an appealing fragrance make people (of any sex) look in your direction? Of course – human nature. Stretch that basic truth by 100 and you get the AXE ads template.
There is zero exaggeration in YesMadam’s campaign. An employee claimed that she was fired because she mentioned in an internal survey about ‘stress at work’ that she was stressed. The next day, she claimed it was all just a marketing campaign and she wasn’t fired at all. This is not exaggeration. This is plain lying.
And finally, the vehicle through which this ‘campaign’ was executed.
For it to be completely believable, it cannot come from the brand handle on LinkedIn (or any online platform). That would expose the lie instantly. It has to come from an employee for it to be really believable. So, Anushka Dutta becomes that guinea pig (as in, an experimental specimen) in this campaign.
Her original LinkedIn post is all over the internet as screenshots. She used her own personal LinkedIn handle, where she shares information about her professional life, professional achievements, professional recognition, some of her personal thoughts, among others. In between those posts, here comes a blatant lie. That’s like her talking to a friend about assorted things and suddenly lying about something. When it is caught, it affects her personal credibility.

When she applies for a job beyond YesMadam in the future, recruiters and hiring managers would no doubt look her up online and may easily stumble upon her being party to a lie by YesMadam in the name of a ‘viral marketing’ campaign. For her sake, I hope they treat it as a young employee’s early-career (she has barely 4 years’ work experience) blunder and not be too harsh on her.
So, lying to garner massive attention is not creative, inventive, or unique. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and there is a very good reason why so many other companies and agencies do not touch this fruit despite it being such a low hanging one. All those other companies and agencies consciously choose NOT to lie to garner attention like the boy who cried wolf. It’s always a choice. And such choices form perceptions. Perceptions have consequences.