Here's a pretty good example of why advertising and PR isn't trusted very much anymore. This story, cleverly entitled "We've been ad" by Mike Keegan of the Manchester (UK) Evening News (referred to as the M.E.N.) is both hysterical and professionally rather sad all at the same time.

In short, pictures used on a billboard to promote the town of Rochdale were not pictures of Rochdale. They were stock photos of other places. (By the way, it took local people about a year to notice this or say anything.) But it gets better:

The revelation comes just over a month after Greater Manchester transport chiefs were accused of misleading motorists in a congestion charge leaflet… The leaflet, sent to 2.5 million homes across the region, included four case studies to show how the scheme would affect real people who travel in the region…  But the M.E.N. learned that the four `local people' were made up by transport officials and that the pictures were of models who lived in the US.

It is staggering to me how lazy and unprofessional some communications people have become.

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