Mark Twain is often given credit for the assertion, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

Were he still alive today, Twain would no doubt be intrigued by the current state of advertising and the golf industry in particular.

At its core, marketing is about procuring and sustaining customers. Customers create profit and profit is the lifeblood, which fuels all things pertinent to a private enterprise. And profit is gasoline to the engine, oxygen to the body and drama to Lindsay Lohan – it makes everything go.

So when someone or something interferes with your access to profit, you take it quite seriously. Especially when the challenge comes from a rival competitor and is the result of some rather shady statistics and shaky reasoning; or as I like to call it “lying.”

I know that lying and advertising are on some level synonymous, or more correctly that consumers understand on some level that what an ad presents as implicit truth is not an iron-clad promise to deliver the image presented. Advertising exists in the vast grey area between fiction and reality.

I understand that if I drink a certain beer, I won’t end up in a hot tub of busty blondes in some snow-capped rocky mountain retreat with 50 of my closest friends. I’m equally aware that a rugged 4X4 truck won’t increase my testosterone levels, nor will my wife and I ever end up on a beach, holding hands in two separate bathtubs watching the sunset, regardless of which pills I ingest.

But, when a company, in this case Callaway, claims to have “The Longest Driver in Golf,” then consumer should reasonably expect that the driver is in fact the longest.

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TaylorMade has dominated the metal woods portion of the golf industry for the last two decades, in much the same fashion as Titleist has owned golf ball usage and John Daly has had a monopoly on bad outfits. So when Callaway claimed to have “The Longest Driver in Golf,” TaylorMade didn’t take it well. When TaylorMade actually looked at how Callaway reached this conclusion, it called hogwash and filed a complaint with the NAD.

The NAD is a third-party wing of the Better Business Bureau that serves to resolve advertising complaints in a manner more expeditious (and significantly cheaper) than legal methods. According to the NAD, “an advertiser is responsible for all reasonable interpretations of its claims, not simply the messages it intended to convey.”

Enter case #5589: The skinny

TaylorMade objected to Callaway’s assertion of producing “The Longest Driver in Golf,” the #LongestDriverInGolf Twitter promotion and the usage of “The Longest Driver in Golf” phrase in eight out of nine advertising videos on the Callaway website.

Where the story really gets interesting is how exactly Callaway landed at this rather bold and audacious declaration. See, when testing the Razr Fit Xtreme driver, Callaway tested the 2013 RFX against five other models (all 2012 models) that represented 54 percent of the driver market according to “dollar market share” based on data from September 2012.

Problem: How can you claim to be the best of anything when you only test 54 percent of potential competitors? What if that 54 percent is inflated and the real number is more like 40 percent as the NAD reasonably suggested?

Also, both the Titleist 910 D2 and D3 were included in the 54 percent “figure,” but the D3 was left out of the player testing. Curious, right?

Callaway didn’t provide any rationale for this, which speaks volumes. Also, dollar market share doesn’t account for drivers that may have been purchased on sale (it was September after all) and creates a false assumption than the most expensive drivers are also the longest. Finally, TaylorMade objected to the use of extrapolating conclusive statements using data from a single month (although TaylorMade has done this exact tactic when it served its advertising needs…pot…kettle…you get the idea).

I don’t know that you need to test all 180-some-odd drivers that have appeared in the Golf Digest Hot List since 2004, but if you’re going to be the longest driver in golf in 2013, wouldn’t you want to test your product against other 2013 offerings?

Callaway also used a variety of test groups to test the five drivers against the Razr Fit Xtreme. The random sampling (one group had 13 testers, another eight and another 12) was indicative of either a group of fourth graders running a school science experiment or a company that never thought it would have to defend the validity of its claims. It gets better (or worse): 11 players tested only one driver, two players tested two drivers, eight players tested three drivers and only three players tested all five.

Problem: TaylorMade stated that it would have been more valid to treat each individual comparison of the RFX to one of the other models as an individual test. However, only 20 of the 58 would have shown the type of results Callaway desired and that’s hardly enough to be the “the longest driver in golf,” and probably not enough to even be the longest driver in your neighborhood.

Finally, Callaway didn’t actually fit the adjustable driver to ANY of the test participants, and it only used the 440 cubic centimeter head (which is only available in lower lofts and geared toward better players), failed to use any women as test participants and did I mention, all testers were CALLAWAY EMPLOYEES!

Problem: When your burden of proof is to test the “broadest range of player abilities possible,” it’s probably best to include both males and females and a wide-range of handicaps in your test pool. Looking at the handicaps of the Callaway employees/test subjects, 88 percent were 0-to-15 handicap and 77 percent were 0-to-10. When the average male handicap hovers in the mid-teens, this just doesn’t pass the smell test.

After considering all of the information presented, the NAD stated that Callaway didn’t provide sufficient evidence to declare the Razr Fit Xtreme “the longest driver in golf.” File that in the “duh” pile.

Callaway was disappointed and disagreed with the NAD decision (enter shocked face smiley emoticon here), but said that the company respected the decision and discontinued “The Longest Driver in Golf” campaign.

Translation: We’re really bummed we got caught, but hey, at least this product cycle is over and we can all move on.

Yet another layer to this smelly onion is case #5584, where Callaway asked the NAD to look into TaylorMade’s claims that “The average golfer picked up about 17 yards with the ROCKETBALLZ 3-Wood.”

It shouldn’t be lost on the reader that Callaway filed this complaint after receiving the complaint from TaylorMade regarding the RFX driver. It could be just interesting timing, and I could also be Hulk Hogan.

The NAD ultimately found no cause to ask TaylorMade to do anything more — TaylorMade had already deleted the content from an interview-style video with its CEO and added necessary qualifiers such as “better player”… compared to Burner ’11 fairway and 150 mph ball speed … total distance.”

What maybe gets lost in all of these qualifications is just how ridiculous it still is. In order to gain the supposed “17 yards,” you have to compare the 2012 RBZ fairway wood to the 2011 Burner fairway. OK, that’s simple enough. But now, you need to generate 150 mph of ball speed with a 3 wood. The average consumer is just going to gloss over that and make the unlikely assumption that 150 mph ball speed with a 3 wood is imminently doable. Let’s break that qualification down:

Looking at some PGA Tour stats, we see an average driver swing speed of 113 mph and a carry of 269 yards. This gives the player approximately 2.38 yards of carry for every mile per hour of swing speed. If we use a smash factor (ball speed/swing speed) of 1.47, we see that the average tour ball speed, with a driver, is approximately 166 mph.

To achieve a ball speed of 150 mph with a 3 wood (again, assuming a smash factor of 1.47, even though many amateur players will be closer to 1.4 or lower), a golfer would need a swing speed of approximately 102 mph, or just a couple miles per hour slower than an average PGA Tour player.

The average male driver swing speed is 80-to-85 mph, or some 30 mph slower than the average Tour player. If a 3 wood swing speed is a good 7 mph less than that, then the average player is generating approximately 110 mph of ball speed, or 40 mph less than the requisite amount to experience the “promised” 17 additional yards. At 2.38 yds carry/mph of swing speed, the average golfer is about 95 yards short of being able to realize the full Rocketballz potential.

Like Penny Lane quipped in Almost Famous: “It’s funny. The truth just sounds different.”

And generally, the truth just doesn’t sell as well. The individual consumer might be able to handle the truth, but I’m not sure the market could bear this reality. I don’t know about you, but if I only purchased items using objective, fact-based decisions, I’d probably have a lot less stuff. And if everyone did this, companies couldn’t survive. I’m hard pressed to come up with a solid list of people I know who will drop a couple hundred bucks for a couple yards, yet that is often the reality when an individual “upgrades” to the latest and greatest golf gear.

So instead, OEM’s propose the possible, the theoretical, and the consumer believes it to be the actual. The critical consumer knows that most PGA Tour players use drivers that are 45 inches or shorter, yet they continue to chase more distance with 45.5-inch and 46-inch drivers because they cranked one up on a launch monitor at some indoor big box store and couldn’t believe how far they hit it.

While Callaway and TaylorMade might be making the most noise (or crying) right now, these are hardly isolated incidents.

Some notable examples:

• The recent thread on GolfWRX documenting the industry practice of mis-stamping driver heads. As stated by Callaway, driver heads could be off by as much as 3 degrees. So your 8.5-degree driver could actually be closer to 11 degrees.

Click here to read the discussion about mis-stamped lofts in the forums.

Certainly, there are manufacturing tolerances in all industries, but essentially the OEM’s don’t trust the consumer to make an informed decision. Knowing that machismo and low-lofted drivers can go hand in hand, the OEM’s get the win-win. They sell a driver that fuels the male ego, yet probably fits the player a bit better. The player believes he is playing an 8.5-degree driver and no one is the wiser – that is until a golfer goes to get fit and can’t understand why he’s getting the best numbers from an 11.5-degree driver that is 2-degrees closed. If only he knew.

And lest we forget, it’s still lying. Boldface lying. My doctor doesn’t tell me the blood pressure he wants me to have, and at the end of my round, I sign for the score I shot, not the one I wanted to shoot. If OEM’s are willing to purposely stamp the wrong loft on a club, what else are they willing to do to “protect” us from our savage egos?

• TaylorMade’s current “My R1” campaign: Based on the commercials, any reasonable person would conclude that the driver played by the pros is the same club you can by at your local retail outlet. I mean, what else would you fathom when Dustin Johnson hands you “his R1?” What they don’t tell you is that NO ONE on Tour plays the version that is sold to the public.

Click here to read our full story on the differences between the TaylorMade R1 driver available in stores and the one played on the professional tours.

Every OEM engages in advertising and marketing campaigns. Some are simply more aggressive than others. There are no fender-benders on the Autobahn, and when a company like TaylorMade or Callaway gets called out for crossing the line, there’s going to be some flames. But don’t you think the OEM’s know this? Aren’t some of these crashes calculated and already accounted for? Maybe they’re even expected.

Think about the recent case with Callaway. By the time the NAD investigated and rendered a decision, information was already leaking about Callaway’s next driver. So how much did the faulty campaign really cost Callaway? Pennies. It’s not like Callaway had to buy back a bunch of recalled products or really do much of anything, other than perhaps apologize and then focus on selling the living daylights out of whatever the next product is.

There might be a bit of public scrutiny, but likely nothing of lasting significance. The campaign was faulty from the onset and Callaway knew this, but the company leadership isn’t dumb. They knew exactly how shady their math was, but they also knew the odds were in its favor.

Nike just performed a similar act with the Roger Federer shoes at Wimbledon. The All England Club (ruling body for Wimbledon) requested, after a short 69-minute match that Federer no longer wear his white shoes with orange soles. See, Wimbledon has a strict “white apparel only” policy that is as much a part of the tradition as the Royal Family and grass courts. Nike offered these limited-edition shoes to the public for $140 and they sold out well before Federer ever took the court. So who won that match?

Who is to blame for this cluster? OEM’s? Retailers? Consumers? The Mayan Calendar? Just like there have to be buyers and sellers, everyone gets a little egg on their face with this debacle.

OEM’s

Ultimately, they produce the products and they have the final say in what lofts get stamped on clubs, what clubs are sold to the public and which are “tour only.” They create the ads and invest millions in marketing campaigns. Their money, their message, their profit. They can be as honest or dishonest as they feel necessary.

• Blame rating: Four stars

Retailers

As the outlets for the OEM’s, they absolutely have to move product. In fact, retailers probably have more pressure to move product than anyone. For them, it really is all about volume. How many of you have been the victim of a juiced-up launch monitor at a big box outlet? How often do we see threads detailing the latest barrage of bullarky from the $8-per-hour sales person? In this case, the consumer gets precisely the level of service and expertise they’re paying for.

• Blame rating: Three stars

Consumers

Actually, consumers have the most power in this conversation, yet the least information. No one has to buy anything, and the maxim about fools and money is far too often accurate.

• Blame rating: Two stars

The sooner golfers realize that OEM’s don’t care that much about helping golfers play better golf, the better off they will be. At the end of the day, a company’s bottom line is the bottom line. They don’t care who is buying their product, as long as someone is buying their product. They need profit, which means they need consumers who believe that whatever they are selling will fulfill some need they have.

I’m not suggesting that all OEM’s are evil villainous creatures that will stoop to any level just to make a buck, but if you are buying a ball, a club or a shaft only because of what a retailer or OEM is telling you, you’re playing right into their hands.

It’s like my uncle used to tell me. If you’ve been sitting at the poker table for 10 minutes and you can’t find the fool. Guess what? It’s you.

So, how long have you been sitting at the table?