So I was looking for some feta cheese a while back, and ran across a brand with a suitably Greek name, and the words “Imported” on it. So I picked it up to get a better look at the actual quantity in the tub, and noticed that the cheese was actually produced in… Argentina! Not at all Greek, but definitely imported.
I got to wondering what other sketchy marketing tricks people see on products and ads? Anyone got any good ones?
“Fair and Balanced”
Going out for business sale!
Cheap imitation balsamic vinegar being marketed as “balsamic vinegar of Modena” to hide the fact that it’s just wine vinegar with artificial coloring.
I guess I should clarify; not just meaningless marketing words (i.e. “New and Improved!”), but rather deliberately deceptive, obfuscatory or confusing marketing methods or slogans.
In a convenience store last week I purchased a glass bottle of what was labeled “Pure Cranberry Juice." In the car I read the ingredients and was surprised to see HFCS listed. Turns out the brand name was “Pure." (I’m fairly certain it said juice and not cocktail)
That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about!
I’m pretty sure that would run afoul of the FTC - Cecil wrote a column about that: How can Grape-Nuts cereal contain no grapes or nuts? - The Straight Dope
100% cranberry juice, IIRC, is really bitter and astringent, which is why it’s almost always sweetened or cut with apple juice.
Where it gets deceptive, IMO, is when you have juice blends with names like “Blueberry Pomegranate” which are almost entirely apple juice and the flavoring is artificial.
This forum isn’t big enough to begin to list an abstract of a summary of a selection of representative samples of randomly chosen marketing BS. OP, what are you thinking? Are you trying to DOS the board from within?
Probably the most extreme single example was a mortgage ad that ran nonstop on the low-grade channels around 2007. It screamed about a 1% rate and showed a table of absurd payments - something like $375/month for a $500k mortgage. You had to watch it closely and several times (without going deaf and/or barfing) to catch the brief fine print… that was the* first month’s rate only*. Past that it was an exceptionally egregious ARM. And that is “exceptionally egregious for the latter stages of the mortgage hysteria.”
Hard to top that one with yet another breathless adjective-with-a-bang in a splash on a drink bottle.
I’ve heard that products can say something like ‘100% Cranberry Juice’ to indicate that 100% of the juice is from cranberries, but it doesn’t mean that the bottle only has cranberry juice in it. They can also put raw sewage in the bottle, but as long as the juice is only from cranberries, they can put 100% Cranberry Juice on the label.
You sometimes see “whole grain” popcorn. All popcorn is “whole grain” because it is made from whole popcorn kernels. With some foods, yes, whole grain is special and could possibly represent a more balanced product. For popcorn, no, it’s just popcorn, and maybe a crapton of butter.
[Moderator Hat ON]
I think this’ll get better responses in MPSIMS.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
I have seen many car adverts which claim an amazingly low monthly payment, but then when you look at the fine print it turns out that there’s a huge balloon payment at the end of the loan. So those low monthly payments are effectively only paying off half of the loan.
According to Mort Rosenblum’s excellent book, Olives, Italy exports more olive oil than it produces. How does it do this? It buys oil cheaply from Greece, Spain or Algeria, labels the bottles “Bottled In Italy”, and exports it.
That’s not to say that the other countries can’t produce excellent olive oil. In fact, my favorite kind is Greek. It’s just that Italian olive oil has a cache that drives up the price and it can be sold for a lot more money.
Me, I just buy the Greek kind labeled as such, from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. Cheap and good.
A bit off-topic for the intent of your thread, but there are a substantial number of Greeks in Argentina:
and it’s plausible to me that some of them could be making feta cheese (“just like you’d get back home”), and exporting some of it.
Argentina exports plenty of fruit and wine, so why not cheese, as well? 
What were the ingredients?
Green.
I don’t think that would be allowed in the US, but you might be able to find information on that here:
Or maybe here, 21 CFR 101
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