Lying is a lousy marketing strategy.

When you were a kid and you did something stupid then lied about it to your parents, the lie always made it so much worse.

I think we can each remember a parent saying, "it's not (your bad act here) that has me so upset. It's that you think I'm so stupid that you thought you could get away with it by lying."

Consumers feel pretty much the same way. 

From Toyota to BP, brands that screwed up then covered up this year ended up costing themselves much more than if they had just admitted their mistakes, fixed them and moved on.

Just one of the lessons to be learned from this year in marketing.