Advertising - The Use and Abuse of English and Math – Part III
A careful examination of a “% off offer” will often reveal an example of a range of totally misleading claims about the price. Many consumers will see “50% (or whatever reduction the trader is offering) and believe they are getting a bargain. If a trader has other outlets in the UK, he can select a remote little used location and raise the price of an individual product or range of products to any price for a period of weeks and can then offer it in the other stores showing a significant %age or cash reduction.
Another ploy is to get the trader’s supplier to increase the basic price, give a reduction back to the trader to the basic price and the trader can use the supplier’s artificial price reduction as his own.
“Special Price”, “%age off” and “Buy One, Get one Free” are also used to hide price rises. A product will be labelled as one of these below the normal price for a few weeks and then re-priced above the original sale price. The increase is explained as the removal of a special price promotion.
Many advertisements use statistics to support their claims and you will I am sure seen messages such “9 out of 10 women agreed that our skin cream reduces wrinkles. Other examples may state” recommended by dentists.” or” the first choice of 75% of mothers.”
Such advertisements often include a survey result (often in tiny print at the bottom of the screen, package or advertisement) that has been carried out in respect of the product and closer scrutiny can be quite revealing: “100% of 44 women surveyed agreed that there was no pain.” Any survey of just 44 women is statistically meaningless. A TV advertisement, just an hour ago, for an anti-wrinkle treatment was based on just 8 women.
Surveys present a whole new range of mathematical sleight of hand to the advertiser. For a genuine survey you have to have a large enough sample group to give a true reflection of views and appropriate weighting for age, gender, socio-economic backgrounds etc. and also for the particular product. If you want to know whether children believe in Father Christmas, you will get a different response in a class of 3 year olds than you will in a class of 10 year olds; the responses from men on beer brands is likely to be very different to those of women, it is likely that young mothers may be the primary audience for baby food and so on. It can be
Surveys can be carried out in a variety of ways telephone, street interviews, door-to-door polling; TV, radio or newspaper phone-ins as well as a burgeoning internet survey industry and each method can affect the statistical outcome of the survey. There is also a thriving industry in constructing surveys as the questions themselves can influence the response and as it is in the interests of advertisers for their product surveys to reflect positively on their brand it is little surprise that so many products carry such encouraging public support for their claims. Surveys carrying negative reports can be shredded (It is believed that the majority of successful trials for new drugs are published but that the majority of trials are unsuccessful)
Once the survey has been carried out the focus will fall on the presentation of the figures:
Imagine that a study deals with dietary supplements and has approached 1000 women.
Of these
- 700 have used dietary supplements at some time;
- 100 currently use dietary supplements but only 90 believe them really useful
- Only 10 use your brand. (Brand X)
With these figures it is possible say:
“In a survey of 1000 women for Brand X we found 70% were users of dietary supplements.”
“In a survey of 1000 women for Brand X we found 90% of users find the helpful”
Despite legislation, financial penalties and advertising standards agencies, consumers are still besieged by advertising which abuses language, mathematics and statistics in pursuit of profit. It is almost impossible to avoid all advertising so read it carefully and critically. Unless the language is clear and unequivocal, it is likely that the wording is intended to mislead. Unfortunately, even where it appears clear and unequivocal, it may still be misleading. Whatever you do, don’t look at the pictures as they are frequently as false as the words they accompany.