I frequent rarely (frequent rarely? Is that possible?  Yes, I frequent, but rarely) sites that hire freelancers such as Craig's List, freelancer.com, and Guru. Recently I had won a bid for a project, and I needed the work, but found that the ads they wanted were in the line of "get rich quick". It was not exactly get rich quick, but they were specific about a sort of informercial feel that made a whole lot of promises that I was more than certain they could not and likely had no intention of fullfilling.

What to do in this situation? There are different theories. Some copywriters look at it like "it's not my job to justify, just to sell." I disagree with this, not only because it is dishonest, but also because it does not work in the long run. I respectfully declined the project after suggesting several alternative routes which I felt could work better for the specific product. 

Selling impossible dreams will always work on a segment of society. "Get rich quick" "Cure acne overnight" "Lose weight without exercising" are all fairy tales, but people buy the product and sellers make money off crushing these people's dreams. But only for a little while. Eventually the product just goes away as the base who first bought into it realize it was something of a scam and do not come back.

And perhaps the saddest part is, the product is not always a scam. Sometimes a diet pill can work, sometimes people make money selling trinkets from home or whatever, it just does not work as well as they first claim.

Had they been honest at first, they would not have sold as much that first week or month maybe, but their target audience would have shifted, people would come back for more, they would not have turned off a large segment of the population. And, after a year or two, they would still be making money instead of moving on to a whole new scheme.

In the long run honesty is always the best policy, even in advertising. And you can make more money that way too, if that is something you're worried about.