This morning I caught an infomercial where someone referred to a steam cleaner as giving a “high definition clean”. Now at some point someone sat down and wrote that. They could have used brilliant or stunning or pure or perfect or any other word but they decided to go with “High definition”.

Did they choose this because they think that in the mind of some lugubrious dullard it would create an association with their tv, and therefore make them want the product? Do people think like that?

Even more annoying is the local laser eye clinic here who keep trotting out testimonials from minor celebrities about how their vision is transformed and they can “now see everything in Full HD!!” (which is rather pathetic to any approximation of human sight).

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyEC3eiiOBo[/video]

It’s nearly as annoying as prefixing everything with “i” or “blue” or “green”.

Just begone with ye.

maybe you are meant to clean your HD TV with it?

Not much to add other than LIKE…

Oh, and ‘Digital’ although I think that ship has finally sailed!

What about 4K tv’s?

In my local shell garage there is a chiller display that has the words “Conveniently Fresh” written on it…

Now, I think they want to convey the message that the food is both conveniently packed and fresh…not say like the food in other shop that’s inconveniently fresh…

most advertising appears to be words just jammed togther…

I remember the 80’s when they used to paint everything red and write ‘Turbo’ on it.

Toothpaste ads have some history here. Emblazoned on the packaging will be something like: 30% better cleaning! 30% better than what? A sausage? No one with even a modicum of logical reasoning could ever work in marketing.

Yes, people think like that. It works as a promotional tool.

Even Dyson get in on the act – “powerful v6 motor”.

Rachel

I always like it where item xyz is marketed as a quality product. What does quality actually mean? High quality, low quality, mediocre quality? Using the word quality on its own is meaningless.
Much like most advertising these days!

No one with even a modicum of logical reasoning could ever work in marketing.

But they do and they make a killing, find some episodes of Gruen from the abc down here in Oz for some of the background/inside

Did they choose this because they think that in the mind of some lugubrious dullard it would create an association with their tv, and therefore make them want the product? Do people think like that?

Probably, yes.

Marketing merely inhabits, and reflects back, the prevailing culture it operates in. Telly is awash with Sky’s latest Ultra-Mega-Sooper-Dooper-****ing Mind Blowingly High Definition TV, so a steam cleaner delivering a mere high definition clean can **** right off, quite frankly

head and shoulders tv ad – ‘up to 100% flake free’ – really?

No one with even a modicum of logical reasoning could ever work in marketing.

You really couldn’t be more wrong

*awaits someone posting the Bill Hicks clip up*

binners

No one with even a modicum of logical reasoning could ever work in marketing.

You really couldn’t be more wrong

He’s spot on based on my experience.

P-Jay – Member

I remember the 2010’s when they used to paint everything redwhite and write ‘Turbo’ on it.

Every new Vauxhall I’ve seen recently ^

It’s the brilliant mixing of verbs and descriptions…
Like that tiny razor where the chisseled bloke shaves in the swimming pool or at work or at 80mph on the motorway:

[b]“the POWER of 3000rpm”[/b][/u]

Does not fempute….

DrP

I remember the 80’s when they used to paint everything red and write ‘Turbo’ on it.

I was convinced that kettles had a turbine in the spout, using all that steam energy to generate moar powah to heat the water faster!

Every new Vauxhall I’ve seen recently

at least they do actually all have turbos now.

rinse and repeat. how much did that earn the industry?

Even Dyson get in on the act – “powerful v6 motor”.

*Even* Dyson? They tell as many downright lies as anyone. “No loss of suction” my arse…

No one with even a modicum of logical reasoning could ever work in marketing.
You really couldn’t be more wrong

Hmm. How about ‘horribly conflicted’ then?

No loss of suction, my arse

Insert comma – instant product 🙂

Maybe I was wrong about this marketing thing…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance

and every ‘decent’ waterproof material ends in ‘tex’…

TURBO POWERRRRR!

….mibbe not. 😳

He’s spot on based on my experience

A good steam clean will get rid of that, any ideas of a decent one?

and every ‘decent’ waterproof material ends in ‘tex’…

Except Artex.

Every era has its now-sounding superlative. Very few of thing thing labelled turbo in the 80s actually had a fan inside, sticking ‘@’ symbols and dots on things in the noughties didn’t actually connect them to the internet, ‘Bikinis’ in the 50s and 60s weren’t generally sold contaminated with radioactive fallout.

I was involved in curating an exhibition of early televisions for an anniversary of Baird’s first test transmissions. The museum had various early tellys and broadcasting equipment etc but also bits of memorabilia and ephemera from the era.

One was called ‘The Television Quiz Book’. The book had nothing to do with televisions, nothing to do with television programmes. It was just a general purpose, general knowledge quiz book. The work ‘television’ was just used as a very now-sounding word on the cover.

like the way that turbo cillit bang is associated with a car that is only super, not turbo. or is that part of the marketing? that the car is super which is like turning it up to 10, but cillit bang is turbo, which is still one more, and turning it up to 11 ?

Toothpaste ads have some history here. Emblazoned on the packaging will be something like: 30% better cleaning! 30% better than what? A sausage? No one with even a modicum of logical reasoning could ever work in marketing.

One of the ways advertisers can get a bit hamstrung is its quite problematic to negatively advertise other peoples products to promote your own. Often when they are saying that their product is measurably better than (what they’d like you to think is) their competitors the product they are actually making a comparison to (if you squint at the small print) is another one of their own.

Of course we’ve not yet tapped the king of marketing bullshit – toothpaste.

Pro, or ‘to go pro’, stripes, crystals, baking soda, various bits and bobs.

In my view Colgate are the worse though, for years they sold toothpaste, it was recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists (it was actually recommended by all dentists when asked “do you think toothpaste is a good idea? but 9 out of 10 sounded more credible) it cleaned your teeth of things that made them dirty.

After a few years they realised that they could make a bit more money if they made a few more types – “don’t worry about that one that cleans your teeth, you want the one that cleans your teeth and has fluoride in it” – the consumer may ask “well, if it’s so good, shouldn’t you add fluoride to your existing product” “oh we did, but this one is more better” “oh”.

Over the years they made more variants, whitening pastes, pastes to help gums, pastes to freshen breath – their standard issue paste does all those things, but these are “more better”.

After a few years, they went for a bit of cross-category because after all it’s only fair that consumers should be able to freshen their breath and whiten their teeth so they made hybrids of the original “more better” varieties.

This went on until the 90’s when they had another great idea – hang on a moment, what if consumers what to do ALL of the things our various “more better” pastes do – we could charge them double for “Total” is does EVERYTHING, they actually sold it as the end of the need for all the various different specialist pastes…

a few years later….

New Colgate Total Whitening! and the cycle starts again.

I have a feeling that there might be something more to it with Colgate. When Lays bought Walkers they took walkers from something like a 5% share of the market to something like 80% in a really short time, pretty much reversing the market share with Golden Wonder and condemning us all to wrong colour salt and vinegar crisp packets. They didn’t do that by signing up Gary Linaker. They did it by paying the supermarkets for shelf space so that Golden Wonder couldn’t actually put their goods on sale.

I wonder whether Colgate play the same game – theres almost not other brand of toothpaste on the shelf – but supermarkets need there to be a choice so the have to invent a whole bunch of spurious variants. Either thats because Colgate are buying all the space at the expense of their competitor, or by having such a huge range of variants their competitors are just lost in the crowd.

it was recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists (it was actually recommended by all dentists when asked “do you think toothpaste is a good idea? but 9 out of 10 sounded more credible)

Isn’t the recommendation from Dentists now that ‘it doesn’t really matter if you use toothpaste or not, just brush your teeth’. Not so handy to put on your toothpaste ads though 🙂

A friend of mine recently observed that the invention of 650b was probably down to a Gillette Marketing exec having got a new job at Trek*.

*Delete for any mid to large size bike manufacturer that you want to.

Otherwise Razors they are all Bullshit. Not to mention the **** on Kickstarter trying to sell a laser Razor. I am not making it up.

SunGod – 4K Optics

What, so the goggles take Real life, and capture the image, then process it inside the goggles in realtime down to a 4K image. And all for £65 per pair, well hell, count me in that sounds amazing!

Washing powder is another prime offender. Every time I buy a box it’s “new and improved,” the only way that’s true is if 20 years ago the stuff made your clothes dirtier.

And don’t get me started on “up to…” – that has to be the biggest weasel phrase in marketing. Sales with “up to 50% off” could be selling stuff that’s down from £99.99 to £99.98 and the claim wouldn’t be false.

First against the wall when the revolution comes.

Oh, and,

Surely we’re going to run out of superlatives soon. We have “Ultra HD” TVs now; what happens when they improve on that?

Cougar

Surely we’re going to run out of superlatives soon. We have “Ultra HD” TVs now; what happens when they improve on that?

I think JVC will have to retcon this term

maccruiskeen – Member

I have a feeling that there might be something more to it with Colgate. When Lays bought Walkers they took walkers from something like a 5% share of the market to something like 80% in a really short time, pretty much reversing the market share with Golden Wonder and condemning us all to wrong colour salt and vinegar crisp packets. They didn’t do that by signing up Gary Linaker. They did it by paying the supermarkets for shelf space so that Golden Wonder couldn’t actually put their goods on sale.

I wonder whether Colgate play the same game – theres almost not other brand of toothpaste on the shelf – but supermarkets need there to be a choice so the have to invent a whole bunch of spurious variants. Either thats because Colgate are buying all the space at the expense of their competitor, or by having such a huge range of variants their competitors are just lost in the crowd.

Flooding the market with more and more variants to diminish the market for your competitors certainly works – just look at VW – they seem to be able to bang out 3 or 4 types of everything they make.

They did it by paying the supermarkets for shelf space so that Golden Wonder couldn’t actually put their goods on sale.

You may or may not be surprised by the % of a big chain shop’s profits are made up of payments made by suppliers.

It’s a lot.

As a manufacturer/brand owner you can pay a retailer for virtually anything, and they won’t give you anything if you don’t pay up. Listing fees, shelf placement fees to be at eye level, extra location fees for ends of aisles, marketing fees, charges for access to data, charges for delivery of products to stores, fees to run promotions…

These fees are what caused the Tesco accounting scandal