There is a saying that “a fool and his money are soon parted.” Although we like to think that we’ve grown wiser to the ploys of devious marketers, every new day is another opportunity for them to get us to spend. Through honeyed words and deceptive lingo, marketers attach an extravagant number of bells and whistles to their products – but even gilded garbage is still garbage at heart. With the inevitable onslaught of year-end advertisements making their way towards us, how can we get better at identifying deceitful marketing and avoiding bad purchases? Join Wordsmith as we take a closer look at less-than-honest sales pitches!
Awareness and reservation are key
When dealing with advertisements, we should always keep our guard up – taking everything at face value is what marketers and swindlers want us to do most.
Although regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and Truth in Advertising put out helpful articles and mental checklists to help consumers identify fraud, Andrew E. Wilson (an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Sawyer Business School at Suffolk University in Boston) and his co-authors Peter Darke and Jaideep Sengupta believe that such articles are too linear and only teach you to look out for specific kinds of scams – which puts consumers at risk of being tricked by scammers who employ other tactics.
Instead, Wilson et al. have devised a broader model dubbed “goal shielding”. Taking on the form of a multi-tiered flowchart (or goals) instead of a standard checklist, goal shielding provides a more logical flow of how we should react while also warning us about coinciding deceptive tactics. For example, an ad with a fake expert may also use limiting footnotes (disclaimers in small print) to avoid legal consequences.
“Goal shielding helps us to pursue one goal without being distracted by the many alternatives available,” explains Wilson. “Imagine goals arranged in a hierarchy, where the top hierarchy is the most general vigilance goal (adverting skepticism); and the bottom comprises multiple vigilance goals for specific advertising tactics.”
The bottom row features the four primary types of deception that marketers and scammers may use against you:
1. Manipulative flattery – if you’ve received compliments like “wow, you’re so smart” or “you’ve got great taste” from a salesperson before, they may be trying to stroke your ego so that you make an emotional purchase. Although some compliments may be genuine, it’s probably safer to treat every statement with skepticism to avoid risk – be indifferent to the flattery and ask questions or do research to help you make an informed decision.
2. Native advertising – also known as “sponsored content” or “advertorials”, these may appear as customer testimonials or blog articles, but are actually adverts in disguise. For example, a prolific blogger you follow might have been paid to promote a product using their own style or format, which would make it easier for the blogger’s audience to accept. People who put out sponsored content are often getting paid (or receive some sort of benefits) to promote said product, hence you should reserve doubt as to whether they are genuinely endorsing the product or not.
3. Illegitimate endorsers – don’t forget that approval and endorsement are not quite the same. Approval means a positive opinion of something, whereas endorsement requires proactive promotion or support of something.
For example, if you see that a supplement is “approved/endorsed by the FDA”, you should be immediately concerned because this is a blatantly false claim. Despite the potential benefits of certain supplements, the FDA has explicitly stated that they do not approve dietary supplements for any purpose. Always be wary of who the “endorsers” are and whether or not they made such a statement – if you can’t find any information to back it up, it’s likely a false endorsement.
4. Inconspicuous claim qualifications – by law, advertisers need to disclose evidence to claims, qualifications and disclosures in their advertisments, but sneaky marketing goblins may try to obscure this information via small print, footnotes or some other kind of visual trickery.
Even if the advert attempts to substantiate their claims, don’t immediately take it as fact. Look to see if the studies are genuine and whether the experiments were objective. For example, Ivermectin (an anti-parasitic drug) was hailed by some as a miracle drug against COVID… but skeptics quickly found the alleged studies to be riddled with flaws.
Just as advertised(?)
Now that we know what to look out for, let’s go through a few examples of suspicious advertising.
Remember when Lancôme (owned by parent company L’Oréal) claimed their Génifique Repair cream could “boost the activity of genes”? The product is said to rejuvenate users’ skin and make it “visibly younger” while they slept. Here’s the ad they from 2014:
While gene therapy is becoming more prevalent, it is still a serious subject that will undoubtedly attract a lot of attention (even if it’s just for cosmetic purposes). This was the case in 2014 when the FTC jumped on the brand expecting proof… but L’Oreal couldn’t provide scientific evidence and was fined for false advertising.
So what happened? You’d expect a conglomerate as large as L’Oréal to have at least some numbers and research before running their marketing! Apparently not. According to the Daily Mail, the proof on the company’s website were “merely a handful of consumer testimonials, including an ‘Anonymous’ user posting: ‘This is the most amazing product, I will never go without it again.’” With “proof” like this, it’s no wonder the FTC slammed the case shut.
User testimonials are great supplements for helping your product appear more trustworthy to new customers, but they alone can’t prove how effective a product or service is. You need data from testing and studies to do that. Even then, consumers should be wary and check the validity of the results – otherwise you might find swindlers trying to pass off botched trials as evidence (like with Ivermectin). If only one source is available and you can’t tell whether it’s legit or not, it'd be prudent to wait for industry experts and peer-reviewed sources to take a look at it first.
Next let’s look at a product that’s more recent: the controversial Lunchly lunch kits by popular YouTubers Mr. Beast, Logan Paul and KSI. Advertised as a “healthier” alternative to the longstanding Lunchables kits, Lunchly’s website proudly displays nutritional comparisons between Lunchly and Lunchables. Here’s the one for the turkey, cheese and cracker pack:
To the average consumer, seeing that Lunchly has less calories and sugar plus more electrolytes would likely motivate them to pick Lunchly for their children over Lunchables – because it’s healthier to have less calories and more electrolytes, right? Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.
Dr. Mikhail Oskarovich Varshavski (better known as Doctor Mike online), cross-examined the advertising and urged would-be buyers to exercise discretion before buying. Since Lunchly and Lunchables are both classified as ultra-processed foods, they are far from “healthy” – which puts consumers at higher risk of obesity. But then what about the lower amount of calories? Surely that’s got to count for something too, right? Unfortunately, growing kids need calories to fuel their learning and play time – 230 calories for lunch is a very meagre amount when an adult is expected to take in an average of 2000 calories!
Furthermore, Lunchly only compares the electrolyte content of their Prime drink compared to Lunchables’ Capri Sun – not the entire kit – which is a rather strange choice. And since electrolytes includes both sodium and potassium, it’s very strange how Lunchly only advertises the potassium content. As Dr. Mike says in his video, doing so is equivalent to having a peanut butter and jam sandwich only show the sugar content of the peanut butter. Going with goal shielding, you might get even more suspicious of Lunchly because they seem to be cherry picking statistics that are in their favour!
It's also important to know that more electrolytes isn’t necessarily a good thing – imagine if a brand of chips advertised that they were healthy because they had high electrolyte content. Once people realise it just meant extra salty chips, dead stock would be the least of the brand’s concerns.
That’s not to say that Lunchly is wrong for saying that they are healthier than Lunchables. They do win in certain categories (like having real cheese instead of processed cheese product) … but not by a significant margin. Factor in Lunchly’s higher price tag, and parents on a budget would probably be better served by looking elsewhere for their children’s noonday meal.
Marketers are always on the lookout for more ways to trick people into buying their stuff – labelling salt as “electrolytes” or claiming to have developed a gene-targeting night cream are but a few of their tactics. Perhaps these tactics might be banned in the future, but until then, you shouldn’t count on regulatory agencies to protect you from dubious advertising. Your sense of skepticism will always be your greatest shield.