I’ve been blitzing on season two of the vaunted AMC series, Mad Men, over the last five days and nights so that I can finally remember to watch season three episodes live. It’s a popular show with marketing professionals.

Shakespeare’s legacy is based largely on deception. He used the device in every play: females playing men (and vice-versa); characters in disguise deceiving others; stories overheard and misunderstood; apparitions mistaken for reality. Ever since, Shakespearean deception has been used in everything from Leave It To Beaver to Frasier to . . . Mad Men.

In fact, deception is Mad Men, whether it’s every character pretending he/she is something he/she isn’t, or Don Draper’s kids constantly trying to lie their way out of trouble. And because deception and deceit make for compelling viewing, the world of advertising and advertisers is the perfect setting. While Mad Men is staged in the early-1960s, full of boozy smoke-and-mirrors, an essential tenet of advertising remains constant: using condoned deception to achieve a marketing objective – usually sales or branding – is permissible.

I say “condoned” because as a culture we are conditioned to accept that most advertising to some extent deceives through hyperbole (how white my shirts can be; that crap-box car performs like a Ferrari . . .) or masquerade (actors pretending they’re happy customers; perfectly-lighted sets depicting reality . . .). As viewers or listeners in the modern world, provided that it’s made clear to us that advertising is in fact advertising, we subconsciously accept that it’s “just advertising.” The deception is okay.

Contrast the condoned deceit of advertising with public relations. Maybe I’m over-sensitive, but when it comes to perceived credibility, PR professionals get a worse rap than those who work in advertising. You’d think that the opposite would be true.

If a public relations professional is found to have consciously and intentionally deceived, he/she is scorned, ostracized and sometimes even prosecuted. Imagine if you as a professional invented a customer for your client, who had never actually used the product, yet was offered to a reporter as a case study. Such behavior contravenes the code of conduct of every PR association I know, and it is quite rightly seen as being ethically wrong. Meanwhile, the ethics of advertising appear to permit deception – and in our culture that’s acceptable and condoned.

I’m certain that I’m much happier working with an organization and industry that tell the truth, and reject requests to do anything but. Like Don Draper, I would have a hard time living with myself – even if myself weren’t really my self – if it were any other way.