Clinical studies for our product were published by a major university (or something like that).
Hmmmm, sounds kind of vague. Why won’t you give the name? Do they not want to associate with you? Were there studies published, but not in your favor, so you don’t want us reading them? Or maybe you’re exaggerating about the importance of the university.
Well, either way, it’s obvious that it’s all BS.
That sounds quite like the commercials aired on the independent stations from NYC we used to get on cable. A commercial advertising some perfume or middle-to-slightly-upper end clothing line would be narrated with an elegant, upper-class voice, but at the end a guy who sounded like he smoked a carton a day would say “AVAILABLE AT BAMBERGER’S!” in a strong New York accent.
It seemed like a good number of all commercials airing on Mexican television – not Univision or Galavision, but rather stations with call letters that begin with"X" – woud feature a little kid screaming something for 10 or 15 seconds straight. About half of all Mexican commercials seemed to include the line “para la familia,” uttered by a guy who had a voice a few octaves below a subwoofer. If a commercial was narrated, and it wasn’t the screaming kid, about 80% of them had Senor 20 Hertz doing voiceover.
Was reminded of another one today: at the end of the commercial either the phone number or the website address is excitedly announced three times in succession, and then sometimes followed by an outright command to call right this second.
“Call 1-800-BLOW-ME2. 1-800-BLOW-ME2. That’s 1-800-B-L-O-W-M-E-2. Call NOOOWW!”
I realize that tons of money goes into marketing research, and that in most cases every little thing in a commercial, from font color to announcer’s tone of voice, is specifically chosen to stimulate the desired response, but there’s something about that number at the end being yelled at me three times (which I’m sure someone somewhere calculates is the optimal number of usages to reinforce short to long-term memory transfer) just ends up ticking me off.
I just saw another disturbing trend.
“Please, don’t order this weight loss product unless you’re serious about losing weight. No really. We beg you, please, whatever you do, don’t even think about ordering this product unless you really, really want to lose that extra weight. We aren’t kidding around here folks. This product is specially formulated to make. you. lose. weight. Please, God in heaven, don’t even consider using this product unless you’re serious, or it’ll shrink you into a raisin!”
That “you must be serious about losing weight” tactic is insidious.
If you are serious about losing weight, you don’t need that product. But don’t worry, we’ll claim it was our product that did it.
That whole thing with babies and toilet paper. Babies are about the only people who don’t use toilet paper, yet for some reason most toilet paper companies feel the need to use babies–almost always baby boys–in their TV ads.
And that Charmin thing with the bears has to go, too. I really don’t need to be eating dinner and have it brought to my attention what bears do in the woods.
Come to think of it, this motif is probably seen on the actual packaging more than the commercials, but still.