On Rhetoric in Advertising
Recently, a friend of mine commented on a currently-much-broadcast video ad, that she expected it had annoyed me. She was not wrong.
Advertising rhetoric means presenting your company鈥檚 product in a way that convinces potential purchasers that your product is a better buy than alternative products or not buying any products. You do this by making your product sound better and the alternatives sound worse, and, so long as you don鈥檛 make any claims that are vulnerable to litigation for being false or hateful, you鈥檙e fine. For example, in a commercial ad I saw this morning, there was a claim that a company鈥檚 make-up remover (I missed its name) removes 鈥渦p to 99%鈥� while their competitors鈥� products 鈥渓eave up to 30% behind.鈥� 鈥淯p to鈥� is a great loophole! 鈥淯p to 99%鈥� means that in ideal conditions in a lab it鈥檚 possible for the product to remove 99%, but chances are good that you鈥檒l never get those results yourself. Let鈥檚 speculate that an average consumer without a lab or special training might get 80-90% removal鈥攖hat seems reasonable. Now, 鈥渦p to 30%鈥� left behind means in the worst conditions and with a consumer who has no idea how to remove make up properly. Let鈥檚 say that your average consumer might leave 10-20% behind. This would mean that the advertised product would have exactly the same effectiveness as its competitors (80-90 off, 10-20 left), but their using the numbers 99 and 30 makes it sound as if it鈥檚 much better.
Because I don鈥檛 care about make-up myself, I tend not to get heated up about advertising rhetoric on its behalf. Because I am against laundry detergent and I work hard to save water, there are other ads that do annoy me. I remember during our time teaching on Zoom having a rant in an online synchronous class about a Tide Free commercial. It claimed that Tide Free contained no sulphates, no dyes, and no ammonia. I told my students that no laundry detergent currently uses sulphates, because there was a big stink about them being damaging to wildlife and the environment in the 1970s (though dishwasher detergents continued to use them for decades). I told my students that yes, most laundry detergents contain blue dye, to fool your eye into thinking your whites are a brighter white, but that it鈥檚 a minuscule amount of a dye having no proven or even suspected bad effects. And I told them that no current laundry detergents use ammonia bleach: they use hydrogen peroxide instead, as in fact Tide Free does, too. So, Tide Free is the same as regular Tide, but it鈥檚 a clear liquid instead of pale blue in colour. And in my experience, water and agitation in a washing machine get as much dirt out of your clothes as adding detergent to that same machine. If someone in your household has sensitive skin, just don鈥檛 buy laundry detergent鈥攎aybe they鈥檙e sensitive to perfume or hydrogen peroxide!
There鈥檚 another current Tide campaign that claims that you can save $130 a year by switching to using Tide in cold water鈥ut you don鈥檛 need to use Tide to save that money, just switch to using cold water for your laundry! If you look on Tide鈥檚 , you鈥檒l find footnote disclaimers/explanations that watchers of the video ad don鈥檛 get, for example that these savings are 鈥渦sing a non-HE washing machine and switching all loads from hot to cold water, based on average electricity rate of (CA, 11.6c/kWh) and 8 loads per week鈥� or that the claim that Tide cleans better in cold is in comparison to using baking soda (which has a tendency to clump in cold water). Your saving money depends on your previously having done lots of laundry a week and all in hot water鈥攏ot on your using the Tide products. ... And, as someone who lives in a condo, even if I did do eight loads a week in hot water, I wouldn鈥檛 save money switching to cold because my bill is the average of the electrical use of all the units in my building.
The ad that my friend had assumed would anger me is for a dishwasher detergent, and its claims likewise have nothing to do with the product cleaning better than other detergents! The claim is that you can save water by running your dishwasher with a half load, because if you have a super-efficient dishwasher, then you鈥檒l only use 15 litres of water 鈥渁nd a running sink uses that every two minutes鈥� (four gallons in the US version). Hmm. If you turn the faucet on full and don鈥檛 put a stopper in the sink, perhaps鈥攊t depends on the power of your water pressure and the flow of your faucet, but it would be inefficient to wash your dishes that way. I鈥檓 very careful with water and can do the amount of dishes that would be a full load using only 5.5 litres of water (I鈥檝e measured). Let鈥檚 say an average person not taking that much care uses 15 litres to wash the equivalent of a full load鈥攖hat鈥檚 still better than 15 litres to wash the half load of the commercial ad. Yet Cascade has the legal right to claim that using their product could save water in comparison to a hypothetical bad washing by hand. And their product has nothing to do with how much water your dishwasher uses: it鈥檚 just suitable to use in highly efficient dishwashers, like every other detergent. Sigh.
It's sad that advertisers assume most consumers don鈥檛 have skills in critical thinking. This is where a university education comes in handy, even if it makes you more annoyed with ads. Consider taking a course in rhetoric! It鈥檚 really helpful to be able to see what鈥檚 going on in how you鈥檙e being sold stuff.
P.S. About that current Peleton ad that claims 92% of people who get fitness equipment from them are still active one year later: they define "active" as paid-up members, not as people engaging in fitness routines regularly, and they make you pay for one year up front. What this suggests to me is that a) some unknown percentage of people renew their memberships, b) 8% of people get out of the contract in time, and c) an unknown percentage of people want to cancel but don't do it in time and they get renewed against their intention: a + c = 92 ... either that, or they're counting the 92% toward the end of the obligatory one-year period and 8% fight to get out of the deal before the year is up. In either case, that has nothing to do with whether people continue to use the equipment, and it could well be that lots use it as a coat rack a year later, as Peleton's sarcastic-but-dismissed voiceover commenter suggests!