I’m not sure powder v. liquid is meaningless in the laundry detergent department. If I’m trudging off to the laundromat, I want powder. Lighter and easier to scrape up if spilled. If I have a home machine, I want liquid that I can pour on a spot to pre-treat.
I was in a hotel this weekend, and the little shampoo bottle proudly informed me that it contained juniper, ginger, and, I don’t remember, let’s say tarragon, for healthy hair. I want a damn detergent for my hair, not a salad dressing.
I remember an extra-strength pain reliever ad way back in the day that used charts to compare their strength to other pain relievers on the market - they always showed their extra strength vs the other brands regular strength product. I always wanted to yell at the TV when that came on.
If you want a good book on advertising claims (written in the 1970s, but much of it still relevant) pick up Carl P. Wrighter’s I Can Sell You Anything
The book , by a former ad copywriter, goes through what all the weasel words and phrases are, and which ones mean something and which don’t. Definitely a worthwhile read.
The one thing that surprised me was that you could apparently claim your product to be the best, because everyone does, and unless you make a very specific claim it’s hard to refute. Therefore, calling your product “the best”, unless tied to a specific claim, is meaningless.
But you have to be careful about saying your product is better than someone else’s, even if you aren’t being very specific. That does imply something testable, and people will take you to court over it. So most “better than” claims are either to earlier versions of their own product, or to un-named competitors, or else are specific to something provable (in a taste test, 12% more people chose Pepsi over Coke")
Actually, that’s not quite such a meaningless thing. Breweries that cold filter chill the beer slightly below freezing, which, along with some fining agents that may be added, has the effect of making all sorts of proteinaceous compounds insoluble at that temperature, which are then filtered out along with the yeast.
These compounds tend to add a certain amount of flavor and body, but also contribute to haze and accelerated staling, so it has a net positive effect, especially on lighter lagers.
However, the stupid part is that the ads imply that “cold filtering” somehow makes the beer more “smooth”, whatever that means.
The all-time stupidest and meaningless beer ad campaign is the “No more bitter beer face” ads from Keystone. First, beer’s supposed to be bitter. If it wasn’t at least slightly bitter, it would be really strange tasting. Second, there’s no real difference between the bitterness levels of Keystone vs. their competitors like Bud Light, MGD, etc…
This one’s a braindead one; they don’t define whether they mean 3 types of hops, 3 additions at various times of the boil, or anything. Beyond that, it’s not like it’s perceptible in a 15 IBU light lager with no hop flavor or aroma like Miller Lite anyway.
Miller Lite’s tornado bottle(or whatever it’s called) is also particularly bad- so they’re telling us that we WANT a bottle that churns up the beer and makes it lose it’s fizz as you pour it?
My favorite instance of this sort of come-on is the cranberry juice company who advertised that their brand had “more food energy units” than the competition.
The FCC (of which–full disclosure–I strongly disapprove) actually made them run an apologetic anti-commercial. I’m with Herbert Spencer on this one: “The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools.”
I used to joke with my friends that the local religious-goods store used to sell “I Have Faith That It’s Butter” and “I Refuse In The Face Of All Evidence To Believe That It’s Not Butter” or even “You Can’t Convince Me It’s Not Butter.”
It actually contains buttermilk. I think I’ll open a separate thread to discuss whether buttermilk = butter.
They’re still working on the rapture, but they can tell you when the butter will expire.
This reminds me of another one. One of the spaghetti sauce companies used to have commercials showing how their sauce was thicker than their competitors. I think it was Prego, vs. Ragu Old-World Style. But of course, Old-World Style is supposed to be thin-- That’s what makes it Old-World Style. If you took the regular brands of both, you could stick up a breadstick in either.
When spreading this stuff, I always ask for the I Can’t Believe It’s Not a Butter Knife.
mmm
Not quite the same, but this reminded me of:
Jamie Lee Curtis says to eat Poops-A-Lot yogurt, the only yogurt with “Bifida Regularis ™(R)(c)(handsoff)”.
Being able to patent a nominally different strain of bacteria (with a ridiculous name) than the other yogurt has helps make you sound special.
It doesn’t.
From the other thread:
It doesn’t contain cream. It contains “Natural Sweet Cream Buttermilk.”
Huh. Consider my ignorance fought. So – have I now got this right? – you skim off “sweet cream buttermilk” when churning sweet cream to make salted butter, and then use a little salt and that “sweet cream buttermilk” as ingredients when making ICBINB?
For some reason, this reminded me of my local cable company. In addition to the commercials they run explaining how the “pause” button works (something most of us figured out well over 20 years ago), they actually include the following slogan:
“The future is here. The future is coming.”
After the cream is churned, the butter is separated from what’s now buttermilk, which is low in fat. That’s what real buttermilk is, which is what it looks like is in ICBINB according to the ingredients list. The fake stuff is milk (whole, skim, etc.) which has a lactic acid bacteria culture added to it.
Yep. Clever ad-writers there.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t think they really meant to offer food insensitivity testing. I mean, it’s all bollocks anyway - in the UK a ‘qualified’ nutritionist is meaningless and the whole process is bunkum - but you’d think they’d at least get the word right.
My daughter also loves the insurance (I think?) ads that promise a ‘free Parker pen.’ she like stationery and we both know that a Parker pen can be bought for about 3 quid.
Hah, that reminds me of something else they mentioned one time - car repair places with the motto “We specialize in all makes and models - foreign and domestic!”
I always thought there should be a knock-off version of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”.
Now that my first claim has been debunked, I’m curious: could they legally sell butter under the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter name? I mean, all you’re saying is that you can’t believe it’s not butter – which, as it happens, truly is something I can’t believe about butter…
And shouldn’t it really be called, “YOU Won’t Believe It’s Not Butter?” They need to do a better job of convincing me than just saying that THEY believe it.