Beware TV Ads

Watch much TV? Do you view those irritating ads for products you order by phone, or by going to a web site? Here are some marketing practices that you should be aware of.

It's become common for these ads to offer you (for example), a second what-ever-it-is for free; "just pay separate fee."

First, I don't know how much that "separate fee" is likely to amount to, but you should consider that, with this fee, it's not actually free.

Second, consider this: Say the item costs $19.99 and the second one is "free." I think you should understand the offer this way: The item really costs $10 each but you are being forced to buy two of them.

And then, have you noticed that all prices are "just such-and-such an amount" or "only. . ."? This is a bit of psychology practiced upon you by the merchandiser, trying to make you think (usually unconsciously) that the offering price is low, cheap, a bargain. Maybe a little less subtle is when they say "For the amazing low price of . . . ." Or they imply that the price is lower than formerly. Probably you can't verify that, and I suspect it's most likely not true.

Another trick to make you think the price is a good one is when the screen shows a price with a big red "X" through it and then a lower price, meaning (again) that the price has been reduced. Again, be suspicious of this.

Sometimes, if the price is for some cosmetic is, say, $39.95, maybe you are getting two or three items and the ad will say, "A $170 value." There is no way you can verify that and you should consider it totally phony and made-up.

For more expensive items, it might be something like, "For just five easy payments of $29.99 each." (Note the inevitable "just.") First, I suspect they don't expect you to multiply the amount of the payment by the number of payments to determine the total cost you'll be paying. Face it, you're lazy, and maybe also not good at mental math. And, sometimes the screen will show (for example) five payments, which (again) is crossed out by a big red "X", and then it's four payments--again to make you think you're getting a price reduction and a bargain.

Are these TV offers ever a good deal, or at least reasonable? In one case I compared the TV price with the price for the same item on Amazon. The same.

Sometimes the items advertised on TV--even if the ad says "Not sold in stores"--are in fact available in stores. For example, Bed, Bath & Beyond carries many "As Seen on TV" items--and if you buy the item from BB&B, you won't pay the shipping charge, though you may have to add sales tax to the price.

I frankly don't know whether, buying from TV vendors, you get an okay product, or reasonably fast shipping (the ads often say "Allow 4 —6 weeks for delivery"), or whether you get ripped off on the shipping charges. That's because I've never ordered from a TV ad; I'm too cautious. Though I have occasionally bought "as seen on TV" products, and I would not generalize to say that they are no good.

A final word: A lot of what I say here may be pretty obvious to the more shrewd among us, but, judging from how frequently I hear on the news of scams and so on that people fall for, I do have to believe that, if not actually stupid, my fellow man sometimes is naive, incautious, or just not critical.

Update, May 16, 2018:  Another device may be subtle (well, maybe they're all subtle). "You may qualify" for a hearing aid or for their life insurance. Qualify? To be sold something? You bet you qualify, as long as your money is good. They want to make you think you're lucky that they're willing to let you buy their product; but who really is the lucky party when you shell out your money, you or they?
Added, July 17, 2019: Yes, that is the tactic of a vendor of hearing aids. They make you think you are lucky if you are "accepted" into their 30-day trial period to "evaluate" their revolutionary new hearing aid. But if you are smart you will recognize it's simply "we sell, you buy."
Also, you can dial the number shown on your TV screen to learn about extra benefits that maybe not all Medicare beneficiaries (What, not me? Horrors!) may be receiving. It really is just about an insurance agent on the other end of the phone line who wants to sell you their particular health insurance scheme.

© 2018 by Richard Stein

New Math?

There have been some funny things going on regarding numbers, mainly in advertising, but I saw a similar thing in a PBS documentary TV program.

Evidently it's not expected, anymore, that people can understand fractions. Thus you don't or must not say, for example, "This product will cost you one-fourth as much to use." Instead it's expressed as "four times cheaper." To me that does not make any sense and I can only surmise that it means "one-fourth as expensive."

Some actual examples I've seen: "10x softer" (dentures are 10 times softer than teeth). I'm not sure this makes any sense. What are you counting down from? There is no "softness" scale, but there is such a thing as a hardness scale. So, to make good sense, it should be "one-tenth as hard."

Or (this one from PBS), hydrogen is "13 times lighter." Possibly that makes sense but, again, I feel it's expressed backwards and should be "one-thirteenth as heavy."

This one takes the cake for being meaningless: A certain product being pitched on TV "reduces body fat by over 200%." Well, you can reduce something by a certain percentage, but only up to a little over 99%. You get to 100% and it's all gone. So how can anything be reduced by 200%?

This should fall under the headings of how ridiculous and deceptive advertising is, and how things are dumbed down for the average boob-in-the-street. Another instance of the dumbing down of (or to) Americans?

Copyright © 2013.

Drug Ads on TV

Unless you are very young you can probably remember a time before we had TV commercials for prescription drugs. Personally I wish we could go back to those good old days.
I think these commercials are a bad thing. I'll bet doctors hate them, because lots of patients are coming in to their offices, virtually demanding to be given this or that drug that they saw advertised on TV. Certainly it takes time and, probably, patience on the part of the doctor if s/he does not feel the drug is appropriate for the patient.
Also, it's always the brand-name drugs (as opposed to generics) that are advertised on TV. These sometimes are very expensive. Example: I happen to know that one of the drugs for rheumatoid arthritis that is advertised on TV costs about $1000 per month.
So, these ads, along with their outcome of patients demanding the brand-name drugs, mean more money for the drug companies. More money for the pharmacies. More money for the TV stations. And probably more nuisance for doctors.
The advertising rightly should be directed toward the doctors, and of course it is, with ads in journals that doctors read plus "representatives" (i.e., salesmen) making calls on doctors in their offices. I am sure that, even without patients coming in and requesting them, doctors are already well aware of any drug that means big money for its manufacturer.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

Manipulating Us with Words

There's a fellow I know who sometimes comments on my blog. Probably he has no idea how much thought one thing he wrote has provoked in me.

Let me hasten to state that this guy is intelligent and very able and I respect him. But I have not been able to stop thinking about a perhaps rather casual choice of words he made when he wrote about "school choice."

I actually had to stop a moment to figure out what that means. Then I realized he was talking about what are generally called school vouchers. And it was his using school choice rather than saying school vouchers that has caused me a lot of thought.

I already wrote that I consider that a euphemism. It's kind of like when the Republicans wanted to arouse opposition to the restoration of the estate tax (which, by the way, applies only to large estates—I think to those over $2.5 million). So they came up with the term "death tax." Now, put that way, who would favor a tax on death? Probably no one; but it's not really a tax on death per se.

Also similarly, those who oppose abortion call themselves pro life. Someone figured out that it's better to make yourself sound like you're in favor of something rather than opposed to something. And when that term is used, by implication your opponents are anti life.

When the term school choice is used, you are saying—again by implication—"My opponents—those bad guys—want to take my choice of schools away from me." Rather than saying, "I favor using tax dollars to support religious education," which to my mind would be the more honest way to state it.

I could go into how these sorts of tricks of language have been used by heads of state and other political figures over a long period of time, often with sinister objectives.

Let me hasten to add—always trying to be fair-minded!—that the types of rhetorical tricks I'm talking about are by no means the sole province of the Right or Republicans or conservatives. If you want to look at fund-raising letters—those mass mailings sent out by political and social-change organizations to try to get contributions—a letter from a left-leaning organization sounds an awful lot like one from a group on the other side, and the same types of devices and tricks are used. (For example, they're always trying to alarm you: "Give us money to help us fight this or that bad guy or dangerous movement"--gay marriage, whatever.) The people who write these things can, and probably sometimes do, move from a left- to a right-leaning organization, or vice versa, pretty easily.

What I find of real concern is that the general public may not be equipped to recognize what is going on. Rhetorical tricks like I'm talking about have been used in politics and in advertising (it's really basically the same thing, if you stop and think about it) for well over 150 years, and people have examined and criticized some of the tricks of advertisers probably for almost as long. (There was a notable 1957 book called The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard and it's again in print.) But consumers and voters need to be equipped—I'll even say armed—to deal with these tricks. And I don't think these things are commonly taught in our schools, and not even to all college students.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

When Personal Is Really Nothing of the Sort

It all started more than 60 years ago, when television was beginning to enter a lot of American homes. The host of the show would break from the regular show content, turn to face the camera, hold up a pack of cigarettes, and start to extol the advantages of that particular brand of cigarettes (yes, they used to have cigarette commercials on TV, and yes, rather than "breaking" to have a well-demarcated commercial that was shot on another set, the host—say, Arthur Godfrey, for anyone old enough to remember him-- performed the commercial.

The brilliant idea of the people who made TV—or the sponsors who paid for it—was to make the commercial message "personal" by having it seem that the host was speaking directly and specially to you.

By now we are so used to these devices that we don't give them any thought. If we did, we'd find them pretty ridiculous. The other day I saw a commercial for a cough remedy. A guy in bed is talking to the camera to complain that the over-the-counter medication he took didn't help his cold symptoms. Who is he talking to? Me? The cameraman? Why doesn't he say, "Hey, who are you and what are you doing in my bedroom?" Is he used to strange people in his bedroom?

And a voice explains that what he took doesn't work for coughs. Hey, who the hell is that? Not only, presumably, yet another person in the guy's bedroom—since whoever owns that voice heard what the guy said—but someone we can't see. Why doesn't the guy in bed say, "Whoa, now I've got invisible people in my bedroom!"

One thing I hate, and don't quite grasp the reason for: At some point TV "spokespersons" who do commercials began the practice of talking for a good minute or two and only then saying, "Hi, I'm Ann Hoggis Torde." Why don't they start out saying Hi and introducing themselves?

Written things are personalized to or for us, also, in ways we don't give much thought to. It's been part of technology for a long time that not only can form letters addressed to us have our names and addresses in the same type as the rest of the letter (this is a feature called "mail merge" and goes back to the early days of word processing and even before, when there started to be sophisticated typewriters that could read name-and-address records from a paper tape—if I'm remembering this stuff correctly). A similar technology lets catalogs be printed with your address, and those form letters, again, have your first name in the middle, so that, supposedly, you feel they're written personally and especially to you. Of course we don't believe that at all, but maybe when these things were first used, the recipients really believed that.

Recently I joined a web site (for which you have to pay, or subscribe) that gives you ratings of home remodeling businesses, plumbers, professional services, and so forth. Then I got a mailing from them that says, "Welcome to A___ L__, we're ridiculously happy to have you." Not just happy, but "ridiculously" happy. Wow, they must think I'm really special, I guess.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

More Thoughts for Consumers

I wrote recently about how producers of food and other consumer products subtly deceive us with shrinking packages; and, in another posting ("Lie to, Deceive, Manipulate Them--They're Only the Great Unwashed Masses," January 12, 2010) about how TV "pitches" can contain a variety of deceptions.

I want to add a few things I've noticed recently. First, a little contradiction in claims: I receive mailings from a car dealer from whom I bought a car. They offer a "100+ club" that offers a discount and other benefits, saying "All Toyotas with 100,000 miles are eligible." It sounds like a good deal. I have a friend with a Toyota with an awful lot of miles on it, and I was going to show him this flyer.

Then I noticed the fine print which says "2001 or older Toyotas models only." Excuse me, but doesn't that contradict the statement about "all Toyotas"? What is one to think of that? Are they being sneaky? Well, whoever said that car dealers are honest and forthright? Even the best of them are not above some not-so-kosher tactics when they sell you a car and probably when they service it, too. I could talk about experiences of my own as both a car buyer and a service customer.

How about this: Say you are an airline, and you want to figure out a way to improve your record for flights arriving on time. Well, here is a good idea for you. Say a flight from A to B takes one hour. Well, you simply announce a scheduled arrival time of, say, 70 (or 73 or 76) minutes. Then you can arrive 10 (or 13 or 16) minutes late and still be "on time." Presto, now you're on time 98 percent of the time instead of 68 percent! I believe that some airlines are doing this because they now arrive "early" quite often. Do you think it's because of unexpected tail winds?

Do you ever pay attention to TV pitches for acne medications, weight-loss pills, or exercise devices? The ones with "before" and "after" photos? Notice that the photos are seldom really comparable. They use all sorts of subtle tricks to make the "after" image more attractive. First, the person in the "after" shot is invariably smiling. Also, the hair style (for women) is different and more flattering. The lighting is different. The pose is different. All of these little tricks are used to subtly make the "after" image more attractive, and they operate on the viewer to subliminally make her feel she will be more attractive if she buys the product.

Various tricks and deceptions, subtle and not-so-subtle, have been used for as long as there's been advertising. How much money has been extracted from the less-than-wary customer over the years since we've had mountebanks pitching snake oil? Even if you feel that government should step in and act against the more egregious perpetrators of deception upon customers, the villains will probably always keep one step ahead.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

I Hate TV Commercials

TV commercials are annoying. Worse, much of the time they're obnoxious. My current most-hated are two IKEA commercials. I don't hate the company; I have generally a favorable view of them, but if these commercials keep up I will soon learn to hate IKEA.

One shows a couple racing into their kitchen to cheer (that's the best word I can think of) their kitchen appliances for just having produced a delicious dinner for them. The husband belly-bumps (is that the word?) the refrigerator on his way out of the room. Sure, we'd all do that after an enjoyable meal, right?

After a bit more thought, I want to admit that the concept of the commercial is creative. What is annoying about it is that it begins with what amounts to shouting, and the sudden loud noise is very jarring. (See comment below on loud commercials.)

IKEA's other commercial has two young identical twin girls who go through an incredibly annoying monotone chant—in front of the same pair of double ovens as in the other commercial. I don't know what they say. God bless the "mute" button on the remote.

We have a local bankruptcy attorney who does his own TV commercials (almost always a mistake for the small business owner: better to use professional actors). He used to stare into the camera and talk in a droning voice. He's gotten better, and at the same time his face has gotten fatter--but his commercials are still deceptive, and annoying in their frequency and ubiquity.

It's also extremely annoying when a TV station runs the same commercial twice in one commercial break. I'm sure the sponsor would not be pleased at that practice, if they were aware of it. I think the FCC should crack down on that practice, as they are (supposedly) going to rein in another very annoying practice of TV stations, ramping up the volume on commercials. (My theory is that they do that to wake you up, if you've fallen asleep. After all, the commercial being the most important part of the broadcast, they want to ensure that you don't miss it.)

Here's a link to an article on obnoxious, loud commercials:

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/04/27/ad-rant-after-obnoxious-staples-ad-give-me-higher-prices-and-l/


Besides commercials which are annoying in and of themselves, I really hate tuning in the TV or radio right in the middle (or even worse, just at the start) of a run of commercials. It seems to me that there are now more TV commercials in every commercial break than there used to be. (At one time, if you recall, the FCC had a rule limiting commercial content as a proportion of program content. Since that rule was rescinded we now have the blessing of infomercials.) I know that a commercial break can have at least eight commercials. If you count "spots" (ads for other TV shows), and if some of the commercials and spots are only 30 seconds, there might be 12. When a movie is showing, once you have gotten hooked on the program, the commercial breaks become more frequent (e.g., after only 7 minutes of the program), and longer, as well, with more individual ads.

With TV, I will often let one or even two commercials play. When another one comes on, I hit "mute." With radio, after one or two commercials, I switch it off if it's within reach. I can switch it on again in a couple minutes, when the commercials are done.

Someone once gave a number for the number of advertising messages we are subjected to on an average day, via all media. It was some staggering number, like a few thousand. I'm pretty sure we are normally not even aware of how many TV commercials we watch, and would be surprised at the number. Count them some time.

I used to work with a guy who was pretty pro-business. When I complained to him about commercials, he pointed out to me that commercials are why sponsors pay the money that makes TV and radio programming possible. Of course that's true, but (as I mentioned in an earlier posting on this blog), I as a consumer find it hard not to look askance at businesses when they get ever more ingenious at finding new places to put advertising. Has it appeared on chewing gum wrappers yet? The walls of public toilet stalls? Just wait. (I should be careful, I may well be giving someone an idea here.)

Anyone who can remember back a few decades, when I was a child, might recall that, before cable TV was a reality and was just one of those to-come, futuristic ideas, it was called "pay TV," and the appeal for the consumer was that it would not carry commercials! Now, of course, all cable TV networks, even the "premium" ones, carry advertising. Why? Just one of countless cases where someone found out that they could introduce advertising (or more advertising) and customers would accept it without protest.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Lie to, Deceive, Manipulate Them--They're Only the Great Unwashed Masses

Woe be to he (or she) who is not good at mental math these days. When items in the supermarket are priced at, for example, "6/$3.00" (and so much in the store seems to have that kind of price, these days), do all shoppers know how much they are paying per item? This example is fairly easy; but how about "3/$5.00"? I have no problem with the mental math, but many people would; and even to me it's annoying when stores do that. I don't know whether they do it to make you think you need to buy 3, or 6, or 10 of the item, or just to obscure the per-item cost.

Do people realize that if a merchant's offer says "Buy one, get the second one for 50% off," the buyer is really getting 25% off the total cost? (Do the math: Say the item is $1.00. Then you're paying $1.50 instead of $2.00 for two, a savings of only one-fourth or 25%.) Or if it's "Buy three tires, get the fourth free," that also is 25% off the total. (As an example, let's say tires are $50 each. When you pay $150 for three instead of $200, you've saved $50 or one-fourth--25%.)

When a pitchman on TV is selling something for, say, $19.95, and then says he'll give you a second one free, that means the item is really $10 each—but you are being forced to buy two of them. By the way, so many small items, these days—like pairs of shoelaces and little night-light bulbs--force you to buy several of them because they are packaged together in those abominable plastic bubbles. I had to buy two eye droppers and can't foresee using the second one.

Back to those TV pitches: they might throw in a lot of "extra" and "free" stuff ("but wait, there's more!") and say it's "a $40 value." Such claims are meaningless. How can you verify what the "value" of the package is? Also, note that "shipping and handling" charges are often downplayed. They can be very high and, in fact, the vendor may make most of his profit from "shipping and handling." Also, they might say "Five easy payments of $29.99." Of course this makes it sound cheap but, unless you do that math (again), you may not realize you're paying $150.

Have you noticed that, in advertising, prices so often are preceded by "just" or "only"? A little bit of psychology to make you think it's a bargain or a good value. Be on your guard for this little bit of manipulation.

Here is a link to an article on the tricks that restaurants use in their menus to steer customers toward more expensive choices: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/01/15/secret-restaurant-menu-tricks-dissecting-california-pizza-kitch/?icid=main|htmlws-main-n|dl3|link7|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F01%2F15%2Fsecret-restaurant-menu-tricks-dissecting-california-pizza-kitch%2F

Everybody wants us to buy his cola, candy, or candidate. So they make us think theirs is better, and/or that the other choice is worse. So what if they stretch the truth a little bit sometimes?

We are manipulated and deceived countless times per day--by marketers, advertisers, politicians (who notoriously have been known to deceive and out-and-out lie in their campaigns), the government, and our bosses. It's the attitude of those who govern us—in the workplace and elsewhere—that we don't need or don't deserve the truth, that the masses are fair game for every kind of deception, manipulation, and withholding of information.

I expect to blog more about these matters.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Television makes us fat

You've probably heard over and over—it's even discussed elsewhere on this blog—that Americans are increasingly becoming overweight and even obese. There's been a lot of discussion among experts as to what the causes are.

I want to suggest that television is at least one possible cause. No, I don't mean the inactivity of sitting and watching TV; I mean the advertising of food on television.

Just to make a very rough and random sample, in three or four days of my own televiewing, I saw commercials for some half-dozen fast-food chains (one of them at least four times), one for yogurt, two for sausages (one of those at least twice), ice cream, a pancake house, raw chicken, baked beans—and paper plates, piled high with food to show that they can hold it. This is not an exhaustive list. The Fourth of July is approaching so the sausages and paper plates are to be expected, I guess.

My theory is that watching food commercials—seeing the sponsors' food items shown, often in close-up, in their best make-up (and that's not totally facetious: food is doctored for still photography, as in magazines, and I'm sure something similar is done for TV) so as to look as appetizing as possible—doesn't this make us hungry? Some social scientist needs to do a study to show just how often seeing a TV commercial for food makes the viewer get up during a commercial break and go to the refrigerator. Meanwhile, I've got this bit of advice: the next time a food commercial comes on, showing that double cheeseburger, quickly change the channel, look away--anything but watch it and start to salivate.

And then there are the cooking shows on TV and other food programs. I know that those make me hungry, maybe more so that the food commercials. I'm pretty much immune to most of the food commercials because I almost never eat fast food and I eat almost no red meat. So because of how I have conditioned myself, that close-up shot of a big, juicy burger isn't going to do it for me. But I'm in the minority.

Update, June 28, 2012
Yesterday the TV news reported on a study done by the University of Southern California that shows that TV ads for fatty foods make the viewer crave fatty foods. I feel this shows that I was right in what I said in 2009.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Let's Put Ads in Even More Places!

It is a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism that it never stops discovering, or inventing, new places to put advertising. We've already gotten so used to ads on top and the sides of taxis; on the inside and then outsides of buses and subway cars; and on bus shelters. I noticed ads on the tops of the tables in the mall's food court. A major move was when they started showing ads for the snack bar in movie theaters. And, as we know, if you do a Google search, there are listings which are paid--in other words, ads. I could even make some money by allowing ads on this blog.

I just started to play an online movie and it was preceded by a commercial.

I think I can suggest a few places to put ads that haven't been thought of yet, but I'm sure it would only be a matter of time:

How about ads on the underside of toilet seats in public toilets? No, wait a minute, women would never see them.

Ads on mousetraps?

Ads on the TV monitor that my dentist has in his office? Wait, I think they already have that: ads for teeth whitening and so on.

Ads on pizza boxes.

Ads on soda pop cans.

Maybe when I turn on the stereo in my car, ads could flash on the LCD digital display. Or do they already have that?

Update, December 24, 2011
A couple new (and maybe clever) places to put ads: A couple of months ago, the new(ish) Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel (former Obama White House staffer), gained some revenue for the City of Chicago by selling advertising on public spaces, for example the gigantic pylons at the entrance to a major downtown bridge. This has been controversial--rightly so, in my opinion.

And, I sent e-cards this year as Christmas cards, Chanukah cards, and several birthday cards. These were free cards, and I think that the recipients had to view advertising before being able to view their cards. If that's true I'm rather mortified.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein