Has the prevalence of false ads led people to become jaded?

No

2 of 9

by Eric Lannak

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Misleading ads have not made people jaded. Advertising ITSELF has made people jaded.

Misleading advertising has been with us for as long as commerce. In thirteenth-century London a Baker's Guild was formed to enforce rules against selling short-weight loaves and adding foreign matter to flour, and enforcing price guidelines based on the cost of wheat.

Going further back, the Code of Hammurabi from around 1760 BC had specific penalties for tradesmen whose goods (houses, boats, etc.) failed to perform. Depending on the loss caused by these failures, the penalties could include death.

These ancient laws clearly show consumers have dealt with false product claims going way, way back. Laws are written AFTER an infraction, and rarely in anticipation of one, so obviously false advertising is an age-old practice.

The newly overwhelming and jading phenomenon is advertising itself, which has reached overload proportions.

A NEW PHENOMENON?

No, it's an old phenomenon. Marketplaces and bazaars the world over are packed with vendors advertising their wares, often shouting at passers-bye to get their attention. Regular shoppers in these markets learn to tune out the hawkers and displays that don't have what they seek to buy. This has been going on for centuries.

That's the phenomenon we have today, but it's non-stop we're in the bazaar all the time. T.V., radio, internet, billboard, circular, junk mail and email, and soon to come advertising on your cell phone have put us into the marketplace every waking hour.

We don't register most of it. There's so much advertising, in so many places, that we pay little attention to it. Unless it's something we want to buy.

So advertisers look for new venues that will surprise consumers and catch their attention. They look for new media and new presentations that will draw in customers. They want to entice people into the market for their product, not just draw customers away from their competitors, and the ads have become brighter, splashier, livelier, and more frequent.

But the competitors are doing it too. We are truly in advertising overload.

BUT THE FALSE ADS, WHAT ABOUT THEM?

False advertisers face the same challenges that legitimate ones do getting the public attention. Often, it's the public's indifference to advertising that CAUSES the false advertising. In their drive to catch the attention of a jaded public, they make inflated claims.

But cases of false advertising rarely enter into public awareness, unless they are truly criminal or result in harm. A quick review of publicized false advertising claims for this year shows dozens of them but not one I've heard about. Car dealerships with deceptive "low price" claims, a suit against Apple Computer because it's video display did not show as many colors as they claimed, some claims against stores that advertised "sales" that were not really sales.

The public never notices these cases because the businesses are forced to retract the false claims. And that's as far as it goes.

But sometimes a company makes big-time false claims about their product, their policies, and their service. They get taken to court, and you know what happens? You don't hear about it.

A good example of this is Enzyte, the one-a-day pill that guaranteed "natural male enhancement". The commercials were goofy and funny, showing their man "Bob" smiling away as his "enhanced male" bits were accidentally revealed to his admiring neighbors and adoring wife. These commercials ran for many months.

I found the commercials amusing, but I had no interest in the product because 1.) I am very suspicious of herbal remedies, and 2.) My male bits and their operation need no enhancement. But after doing a web search, I found that those who actually bought into this ad were disappointed in more ways than one.

Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, the company that marketed Enzyte, did not refund the purchase price to unhappy consumers, as they promised to do in their ads. And the consumers were by and large (ahem) unhappy, because the product didn't work. On top of that, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals charged for subsequent shipments that were made after the customer had canceled their orders. Further, the company appears to have defrauded lenders and investors, laundered money, and has been charged with mail and bank fraud. The company's president, Steven Warshak, has been convicted on some charges, and faces prison time.

But NONE of this made popular news. You have to do a web search to find this information. No one I know had heard about it either. Everyone, however, did notice that the amusing ads were no longer running.

A similar product, Extenze, is now advertised widely on T.V. The formulation is not very different from Enzyte, and the same group of unwitting consumers will most likely buy it because they simply don't know about the Enzyte case. You can expect to not hear about their false advertising charges sometime in the near future.

CONCLUSION

Fal se ads have not led people to become jaded. Advertising IN GENERAL has jaded the consumer. The ever-present ads have led to numbness. We register them on a very selective basis, and ignore those that don't apply or amuse.

We hear very little about false advertising. There may be notable cases or regional "bubbles" where false claims are given prominent media coverage, but for the most part there is little news about false advertising.

You cannot become jaded to something you rarely witness. And there simply isn't enough news about false ads to cause jadedness.

Some groups may experience a heightened dissatisfaction with exaggerated product claims. These include overweight people looking for the miracle pill, guys with small gizmos who think a big one will solve their problems, people with bad credit who want to fix it overnight, people who want to get rich from a simple program any idiot can follow, and anyone looking for an "herbal" or "natural" cure.

These groups will always be victims to inflated claims because their hopes exceed what real life can offer.

For the other 90% of consumers, advertising itself is the cause of a jaded public mentality. Too much, too intrusive, too everywhere, the eyes and ears quickly tire. Indifference and selectivity are the only strategies that allow sanity in this overloaded media bazaar where we live.

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