Differentiating Products And Comparison With An Unidentified Other
In his book Confessions of an Advertising Man
, David Ogilvy, founder of one of the most successful advertising agencies in the United States, admits that he is "continuously guilty of suppression very [suppression of truth]." "Surely," he notes, "it is asking too much to expect the advertiser to describe the shortcomings of his product: One must be forgiven for putting one's best foot forward."7 But advertisers are often guilty not only of suppressing a product's shortcomings but also GHD MK5 of concealing the criteria and the evidence on which their claims are based. Such suppression makes it difficult to use advertising as a basis for comparing one product with another.Pseudo-Claims The problems in interpreting misleading slogans often involve ambiguous meaning. What does it mean, for example, to say that product X "fights" bad breath or product Y "fights" dandruff? A promise to control is stronger than a promise to fight, but neither claim promises to eliminate the problem. What is a consumer sup-posed to hear when an advertiser says that a certain shampoo "controls" dandruff with regular use?
Helps is another word used to weaken claims subtly. What does it mean to say, "Vaseline Intensive Care helps heal roughness, dryness"? Take helps out and the statement claims that this lotion, acting alone, heals. Its action is direct, not indirect. The claim to "control" or "help" suggests that using the product will produce positive results. The promise to "fight" is a promise that the product will try to produce results, that it will oppose the negative condition (the dryness, the dandruff) but may not overcome it.
"And Texaco's coal gasification process could mean you won't have to worry about how it affects the environment." What does that mean? The word could suggest possibility without making a specific promise that any given outcome will occur.
Ads often promise "more" cleaning power, "better" cleaning action, or "stronger" whitening power, or they promise that a product has more or better ingredients. But more, better, whiter, stronger than what? No product at all? Some specific product? When an advertiser says that product X is better than product Y, a comparative claim has been made. Of course, advertisers often do not tell us what product the advertised product exceeds and on what grounds the performance of one is superior to another. Nonetheless, better implies comparison. The rules of grammar suggest that a product that is the "best" has no superiors. But what if all the products in a class are essentially equal? Then all are both "the best" and "the worst" because there is no basis for distinguishing one from another. (Such basically identical products are called "parity" products.) However, we incorrectly interpret a claim that a product is the "best" to mean that it is better than all others. Similarly, we hear the claim that "Crest is unsurpassed in reducing new cavities" to mean that Crest is the best when instead the claim literally means that there are no products that are better at reducing new cavities. Others may be as good as Crest, but none is better.
Ads often compare their product with an unnamed other product. "This trash bag is stronger than the cheap bargain bag." It probably is stronger than some cheaper bar-gain bag, but which one, and is the comparison a fair one? One ad claims that wine experts (which experts, and by what standards are they experts?) prefer one brand of wine over another, but the ad does not reveal that GHD Pretty In Pink the price of the advertised brand is higher than that of its competitor. In effect, a top-of-the-line product has been com-pared with a middle-of-the-line product and the middle product has been found wanting. What would the results have been if similar products had been compared?
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