The fallout for Tania Head, and her story that can't be verified in any way, is a good lesson in marketing the truth.
As I mentioned on a couple of other blogs, these are some of the things she asserted over the years:
"She climbed down from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center, which would have made her only one of nineteen that accomplished that.
"She also said she had a fiance that was lost in the collapse, although nobody in the family of the name she gave knows her in any way. Head even forgot her own story at times and called the man her husband rather than her fiance.
"Another story she made up was being handed a wedding ring by a man that was dying, as he asked her to return it to the widow."
Who knows all the underlying reasons why this woman made up this entire story. So far it looks like it wasn't for personal profit, although there will be a lot more digging now that the story is out. She did use the story to cofound a nonprofit organization, Survivor's Network, and also to generate contributions. She has already been removed from being president of the organization when the story broke.
While on the surface this may not seem like marketing on the part of Head, it definitely was. She was telling a story that included her and a cast of supporting characters. She was presenting herself as doing and representing something that had no basis in fact or reality.
In our own marketing we create expectations through the assertions we make when telling our stories. We have to be sure the story we tell is based on fact and reality, not on wishful thinking and illusion.
Head will spend the rest of her life disgraced for telling a story that misreprented who she was and what happened. The same can happen to us if we don't align our marketing with who we really are as a company
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