Fibs and Lies
Are lies that are obvious
lies still lies?
Cheap little deceptions
in advertising are pretty common but it's annoying to have to sort
through the text to weed out the truth. And then there are outright
lies that often are well camouflaged in the wordings. Deception seems
to have crept widely throughout the marketing world.
I don't know when I read
the first ad of this type: High Speed Internet $24.95/month. It was
really $34.95 after six months and for as long as you did not want to
change service providers. When a large communication company uses this
method, successfully increasing market share, then it is only a matter
of time until others follow. Eventually my long time local independant
service provider began advertising the same way.
Exagerations and worse
can be found in a wide range of marketing areas.
In real estate it is well
established. New Townhouses - "Minutes From the Beach" even though they
were 6 miles away from the water. "15 minutes from downtown" (At 2am
and twice the speed limit.) "360 deg
views" (Sure, I just have to buy all the suites on one floor) "Affordable luxury" ?
Vacation marketers have a
popular calming name for a 2 hour stop over during your flight.
"Touchdown"
Even the produce stand
might entice you with Fresh Green Beans –
‘imported’.
The new condo purchase
was to have "Top Brand Name Appliances". I was unpleasantly surprised
that while the brand name was tops the appliances were the bottom of
their line.
The mainipulation of
statistics is a fairly common deceptive method of promoting something.
There are many examples
in many areas. Mostly little things to be sure, but all nibbling away
at consumers' confidence in what they see and hear when considering a
purchase. So the deception virus spreads, throughout one industry and
later connecting with another. How will this play out years from now?
Will everything be marketed with lies?
"You can tell the ideals
of a nation by its advertisements." - Norman Douglas’ South Wind, 1917
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Profit Consumerism
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