I often wish that I had the time to conduct grand sweeps of broadcast and print media searching for and exposing preposterous and misleading advertising statements. Perhaps this is something that I’ll do in my retirement, although I hope that I'll have better things to do with my time. Clearly, the FTC, FDA, collective States Attorneys General and other official agencies don’t have the time to catch it all.
It seems that for every deceptive advertising practice stamped out, another five or so are newly concocted; many companies just let it fly until they are stopped, and then set up the same practice under a different name. I have to hand it to the advertisers for innovation and imagination, as much as I think that the people who engage in such practices are a lower life form than I’d like to associate myself with. I save my greatest disdain for those who market deceptively to children and the elderly, two groups who can be excused for not being able to tell the difference between truth and a version of truth so stretched out of recognition that it is, in fact, a bald lie. They prey on two of our most human traits: fear and greed.
I’m not referring to email spam. This is in a category all by itself, since most of it goes way beyond misleading advertising and into outright criminality. My attention is more focused on other mass media and in particular the use of language to mislead the listener or reader into thinking that they will get something that they simply will not.
When I was young, a classic and not-so-harmful example of this was the advertisements in Boys’ Life and other such publications for the Holy Grail of young boys: x-ray glasses. How I wanted to have x-ray vision! These ads (one of which appears below) featured the x-ray spectacle wearer seeing the bones in his hand. You’ll note he’s also impressing (or… perhaps… seeing through?) a woman. This was powerful stuff; eight year old boys could easily look beyond the word “illusion” in the ad copy. Of course it was illusion, we thought; that’s what eyesight is, right? In the same magazines, you could also find ads for the secret of invisibility (combined with x-ray specs that would be pretty amazing, as long as the x-ray specs were also invisible!) and the amazing “hypno-coin” which would hypnotize your friends in seconds. For a few dollars plus shipping and handling, one could be a superhero.
Something in our guts told us that we couldn’t see through objects, make ourselves invisible, or bend people to our will with a spiral-printed disc. But the promise of such wonders, and the low price ($1 plus shipping and handling was the usual) tugged us hard in the other direction. The promise of youth, money and removal of fear does the same.
As a response to the outrageous claims of “patent medicines”, the US Food and Drug Administration has regulated what sellers can claim about the things we ingest, inject, and apply to our skin. Simply put, the FDA says that you cannot make a claim for any real physiological change from a product unless you file and sell it as a drug. That takes clinical data, proof of efficacy and safety, and quality assurance and control. Does this stop misleading (and dangerous) advertising? Hardly.
On the radio today, I heard an extended advertisement for an “anti-wrinkle pill”. It skated about and beyond the boundaries of silly claims, misleading statements and outright violation of FDA regulations. This miracle pill was “patented” and claimed to reduce wrinkles, acting at a “cellular” level to do so. It also “protects your mitochondria” to increase your energy. And the proof? They cite “studies which prove the value of our patents”. Please pause and reread that phrase a few times. You may now become ill.
This is outrageously deceptive, but it is likely to sell a lot of this useless crap to people who are impressed or intimidated by polysyllables and are wrinkled and/or tired. I meet the latter two of the criteria but I’m much too cynical for the first. No government agency has the time to chase all of this down, and media outlets often just hold their collective noses and accept this trash.
The final category that gets me worked up is quickie investments. Here, marketers know few bounds or shame. During a recession, these firms crawl out of the boiler rooms and onto the airwaves to hawk foreign currency trading, buying and selling gold, and other get-rich-quick schemes to the unsophisticated – and profit mightily on the margins with tactics that I consider criminal.
One company pays “top dollar” for gold – just send in your unwanted gold in their postage-paid envelope and they will pay you, um, what they think it’s worth (top dollar, of course, right?). Someone must be doing this since they keep spending money to advertise it.
Another allows you to buy “leveraged gold for only $400 per ounce”. With gold trading at around $1,600 per ounce today, that sounds like a great deal unless you know what leverage really means in this case. The company is charging you a commission on the purchase – not just on your $400, but on the entire amount. Then they are charging you interest on what you’ve borrowed from them. Then they add some “transaction fees”. These practices (one financial blogger indicates that the total can be up to 47% of your investment) make your chance of profit minimal. But the best part (for them, not you) is that if the price of gold drops, they will come back and demand more cash from you in a margin call. If you can’t put up the money, they sell off your gold at a loss (yours). But they always make money on the transactions. Trading in foreign currency fluctuations (known popularly as forex) is treated the same. For the companies that facilitate this, it’s all upside. For an unsophisticated investor infected with dreams of easy money? Not so much.
There are legitimate creams and ointments that are super moisturizers and can (at least temporarily) reduce the appearance of your wrinkles. And there are plenty of great investment opportunities, including gold and forex, with legitimate brokers and advisers for those who can understand and assume the risk. As long as a marketer’s work stands on the value of their offering, and not on deception, I have a lot of respect for them. I’m not immune myself to a good pitch and I’d be the first to admit that a good marketing campaign can add that elusive element, perceived value, to what I seek to purchase. To those selling empty dreams with lies? Be advised: I will retire some day, and I may just decide to come after you.
Please feel free to share other examples. And if you fall into the category of the deceptive advertisers above -- I’d love to hear from you, but I suspect I won’t.
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