I’m pretty sure juice-makers have come to the conclusion that the only kind of juice people actually like is apple. I once tried taste-testing various juices blind - cranberry, pear, etc - against apple, and there’s only very subtle differences (especially with the cranberry). Most of the effect is just a different color.
I came in here to post this one. Whole grain popcorn! How healthy. I’ve also seen white bread that the makers dyed brown. It wasn’t advertised as whole grain or anything - just normal white bread dyed brown to make people think it was healthier. Thing is, it probably works.
I saw “gluten-free” soap at a craft sale this past Christmas. No they were not trying to be funny. I asked them how much cholesterol was in the soap. They looked genuinely concerned.
“Manchego style cheese” which was 100% cow milk. Real Manchego is sheep’s.
This one I’ll mention isn’t even sketchy (the labeling is very clear), but there are many Spanish products that you can find in Sweden imported via Italy. The brand is Italian, the packaging clearly says “product of Spain”. Some of them are products which aren’t even made in Italy under that particular name: the dry red sausage is labeled “chorizo”, the thin dry sausage is labeled “fuet”.
The corollary is the number of products marketed as “non-GMO”, when there was never a chance in hell that they could possibly contain any genetically modified ingredients in the first place.
Getting back to cranberry juice, I’ve bought the 100% cran (it’s nicely tart, not bitter to my taste, and good for adding to other drinks) labeled non-GMO, though there’s no such thing as genetically modified cranberries.
Those Febreze “noseblind” commercials. They’re alerting you to, and selling the solution to, a problem that you not only didn’t know you had, but are literally incapable of detecting. It might just be the most brilliant marketing strategy ever.
We have a furniture store in town that has been doing this for years. I’m assuming their target demographic is the college student population that doesn’t realize the store has had the sign up for 15-20 years.
A related scam is the store with the “going out of business” sale, then a couple of weeks later the store is open “under new management!”
Contains a clinically-tested ingredient! Well, yes, but what was the result of those tests?
This is quite common, and has been for years. It’s usually labeled as “Wheat bread”. Which it is-- After all, the grain it’s made from is wheat, not rye, corn, rice, or anything else. If it’s actually made from whole wheat, it’ll say so, but most “wheat bread” isn’t whole wheat.
If in doubt, you can look at the nutrition facts: Actual whole wheat bread will have at least 3 or 4 grams of fiber per slice, while white bread dyed brown will have 1 or less.
Other car insurance ads will say something like, “People who switched to our company saved on average $405.” Of course, because you’re not going to switch insurance companies unless the new company is cheaper (and probably not unless it’s substantially cheaper). A better statistic would be what percentage of prospective customers get quotes for the same level of coverage for less than they are currently paying.
A gym opened in my city that advertised memberships for “Only $10 per month*” so my hairdresser checked it out. Apparently it’s $10 per month … and $40 to keep that rate.
Her: “So it’s $50 per month.”
Gym guy: “No, the membership is $10 per month, the $40 is to lock in that rate.”
Her: “…”
Not sure how many people remember Stan Freberg’s ad for Chun King Chinese food (in cans, yuck). The gimmick was “Nine out of ten doctors recommend Chun King.”
Nine of the doctors were Chinese.
Really, to understand all of the insane BS listed in this thread you have to understand what “marketing” is - and beyond the Business 101 kindly-grocer level of “informing you about product choices and availability.”
Marketing is what drives most consumer product companies. They do *not *search out new inventions or ideas on their own merits - they research, to an unbelievable degree of depth and complexity, **what they can make people buy, and then manufacture and present it according to those research results. Nothing more. Nothing less. Any value to a marketing-developed product is purely incidental.
To try and view the situation from any other perspective produces meaningless tail-chasing and, ultimately, madness.
You also sometimes see “German” products in the US that are actually made in Pennsylvania. Yes, there are a lot of Germans in Pennsylvania. German-style chocolate, from Pennsylvania. German-style beer, from Pennsylvania.
We buy our daughters a V8 juice thing that’s a mix of fruit and vegetable juice. V8 has tons of different brands, so we have to pay attention to make sure we get the right stuff, that’s 100% juice. One day, I noticed that there was a “lite” version of the brand that we buy for the same price. I looked the label over and noticed that there was no “100% juice” banner on it. I eventually found, in small print “50% juice”. My suspicions raised, I compared the nutrition labels. The “lite” serving size is exactly the same as the regular, but each and every value - calories, vitamins, all that stuff - was cut exactly in half.
Yep. They’re taking their juice, diluting it in half with water, and selling it for the same price as “lite” juice. You know, in case you don’t have water at home to do it yourself.