Trust Me, I'm Lying

July 16, 2012
In this revealing volume, Holiday describes the marketing strategies he's learned, developed, and put into practice through his work with such infamous entities as American Apparel (under whose auspices he serves as director of marketing) and the notoriously irreverent Internet-to-print phenom Tucker Max. A self-described "media manipulator," Holiday candidly states that his "job is to lie to the media so they can lie to you." According to him, it's all part of the game. Though he admits to being "no media scholar," Holiday effectively maps the new media landscape, from "small blogs and hyperlocal websites," to "a mix of online and offline sources" and the national press. But his main market is blogs, and given the increasingly interconnected nature of the Digital Age and the rise of blogs as veritable news outlets, his focus is prescient and his schemes compelling. From fabricating stories and marketing them "until the unreal becomes real," to defacing his own billboards to build street-level buzz, Holiday's tactics may not represent the apogee of ethical marketing, but they workâfolks love to hate American Apparel's lewd ads, and the vitriolic concoction that Holiday brewed around Tucker Max took his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Media students and bloggers would do well to heed Holiday's informative, timely, and provocative advice.