OK, maybe not lie but sure give the wrong impression.
I was watching television the other day and a commercial came on for a battery. It was saying how good the batteries were because emergency medical types out of Denver that worked the tornado in Holly, Colorado use only their brand of battery. OK, that may well be true but the pictures and sound provided to illustrate the point were just so bogus.
Look on a map. Holly, Colorado is about 35 miles from Kansas. And trust me I know the town. There are no pine forests, no mountains, no cliffs as the commercial suggests. It is like Kansas. Also the commercial suggest that the choppers were storm tossed as they came into Holly. I was there. They weren’t storm tossed. The people appreciated their appearance, but they were not in the middle of a storm when they arrived. It had long since passed on.
They may be wonderful batteries, but that commercial is really giving a questionable impression.
You may know that town, but I’ll bet the person who put that commercial together didn’t. By creating a questionable impression (you caught it and you’re probably not alone) that commercial broke several rules.
Free Credit Report dot com is misleading on many levels. I understand bad credit would block some jobs, but you would not be limited to seafood restaurants and renaissance fairs as your only employment options. I hire technical people and do not screen based on credit scores.
Not only that, the fact that you signed up for a credit report would not have changed the fact of your bad credit that forced you into a lifetime of poncy costumes. It would have just given you an earlier warning. The report solves nothing, you’d still have to deal with the bad credit.
Heck, you don’t even have to go that far to find where Free Credit Report is misleading. Just the first word - Free Credit Report might give you a “free” credit report of a sort (it’s in a crazy format, without a credit score), but you only get it if you sign up, using a credit card, for stuff which is nearly impossible to cancel.
All skin care product commercials. They are full of weasel words. “May reduce the appearance of fine lines.”
As for the OP, just about anything filmed that’s supposed to be in a real place doesn’t get it right. Sometimes it’s idiocy, sometimes it’s intentional for various reasons. I would bet the chances are 50/50 that a decision was made to use mountains and pine forests because that’s what people think of when they think of Colorado, and they think it’s better to match perceptions (i.e., stereotypes) than to make people stop and say, “Huh? That’s not what I thought Colorado looked like.” The storm-tossed helicopter was for dramatic visual effect, because that was determined to get the point across better than reality.
There was also the famous Blockbuster “There’s no more late fees!” ad campaign. The reality under the “new no late fee” policy was that if you kept it more than a week, you were charged the purchase price. “There’s no more late fees!” [sub]“Because you just bought it!”[/sub]
There’s a local one for a stainless steel siding company that drives me crazy. They show the side of a house with vinyl siding that was hit in a hailstorm, and the vinyl siding is all beat to hell and full of holes. They say something like “Don’t let this happen to you, get our stainless steel siding.” What they don’t show is what the stainless steel siding looks like after a hailstorm. It may not be full of holes, but I’m guessing it doesn’t look a whole lot different than a car that’s been through a hail storm, full of dings and dents.
Not to mention the absurdity of the original commercial that the guy wouldn’t have married his wife if he knew her credit score. And she’s walking around as he sings it. Living in the basement? Hell, he’s lucky he hasn’t kicked his ass out onto the street.
But the champion for all these are any political attack ad.
The most questionable radio commercials running right now are ones who claim to wipe out your credit card debt or reduce your tax debt from the IRS (“Many of our tax experts are former IRS agents”).
They’re distributed from one group in the Northeast.
The other thing is does the air ambulance company only use Duracell batteries because they get them for free from the manufacturer? Or because of the free publicity for the air ambulance company?
I lived in Colorado, too, for 10 years, and always found it interesting that inevitably the majority of vehicles who ran off the road during a snowstorm were 4WD SUV’s - guess they took those commericals of vehicles invincibly charging through snowdrifts they constantly show out there a little too seriously, LOL.
On a side note, I remember hearing a bit of a comedy act a long time ago (Steven Wright?) about how Country Crock “spread” has a perfect 100% lies-to-words ratio - it’s not from the Country, and it’s not in a Crock - 2 words, 2 lies.
I’m not sure I understand what is so misleading about the Duracell commercial. What claims did they actually make that you are disputing? Or are you just talking about the fact that they show one thing while talking about another? If so, you’d have to faux pit almost every commercial. If showing the actual footage is boring, they always change it to something more exciting. It’s called dramatic license.
Country Crock probably doesn’t qualify either, as I don’t remember a claim that the stuff was actually from “the country” or from a crock. (But, of course, that’s why it was a joke, right?)
Freecreditreport.com is definitely misleading, though. As are those mentioned by Morbo. The iMac Internet one is the most egregious, because it could have been pulled off. It can be assumed that, if you want to be on the Internet, you’re smart enough to have already done step one, as well as step three (turn the freaking computer on). So the steps could have just been step 2 (rephrased as “Plug in the phone wire.”), and the actual step 2 could be “Start Safari.”
(Of course, all you’d have to do is change step 2 to “Start Internet Explorer” for it to have also been true for PCs…)
FreeCreditReport is using scare tactics, much like those Brinks commericals.
I love those. because they have the guy who clearly is evil and carefully chosen to be exactly the same race as the victim, then he looks in the window and sees a mother and child playing. He says “Wow there’s someone in this house,” Now instead of simply noting in his mind to come back later when no one is home or to go next door, he decideds to break in the house.
Usually by kicking in the door or smashing a window or some other means that would be loud enough to alert the cops without the help of Brinks.
FreeCreditReport says if you don’t keep a constant eye on your credit people will use it for bad things. And there is a wee bit of truth there. The biggest scam with credit reports today is to open a credit card without that person’s knowledge then you forward the address or have it changed to go to a new address. For a year you charge small items and pay them off. (Usually this involves just swapping out cash advances with another credit card obtained without the person’s knowledge.) Then after a year or so when the credit card has now a high credit limit you SLAM make a huge number of expensive purchases and don’t pay.
All of a sudden the person tries to open a JC Penny card and can’t do it. He checks and finds out two months ago someone who had been using a credit card and paying it off for a year, just stopped doing that. Now your credit is ruined.
So it is a common scam and an effective one, but you can do things like put notices on your credit report that anytime a new account is opened you get an email or phone call.
What I like about the batteries (as well as aspirin and other pain relievers) is they say “No battery (or medicine) is MORE effective than our brand.”
Did you notice that? They never said the other brands weren’t JUST AS EFFECTIVE and probably cheaper. They just said they’re not MORE effective.
It’s like going to a “June White sale,” and finding out June White died and they’re selling off her estate. Not a lie, but it’s not what you expected either.
I’m not sure if this qualifies as a lie, but EVERY insurance company now has a commercial that says, “customers that switched saved an average of $300/$500/15%”
At first it was just white noise, but then I had to shop for home insurance and it dawned on me, “No one would ever switch if it cost more.” So of course customers that switch would save money, with the rare exception of a few people that switch because they get dropped, denied, or move where there isn’t coverage.
Which makes their statement entirely misleading. They want you to think that you WILL save $300 if you switch, but that’s not the case. All their saying is that other people who saved switched. Really bugs me now every time I hear it.