A Distasteful Claim

There are many things that advertisements do well. Among those things include creating wonderful pictures, catchy slogans, and silly puns. The job of advertisements is to make one’s products seems superior to one’s opponents as well as more memorable. However, honesty continues to rear its ugly head. There are likely times that advertisements could, and want to, say more, but are bound by not being allowed to falsely advertise.

This leads to an entertaining series of followings. As a company creating an advertisement, one begins to examine how to say as much as possible without saying anything at all. What do I mean you might ask? Well, let’s first consider a set of energy drinks. You know the ones I mean. The one’s designed for athletic appeal, and are all colorful and now have way more colors than is ever necessary in an edible substance? Well, what is the first thing you think of when you play their commercials back in your head? For me personally, I always remember that they have “more electrolytes”. Perhaps “more” electrolytes is not correct. Maybe they only advertise the presence ‘of’ electrolytes.

So what is going on here? Why are we talking about electrolytes? Well it sounds so much more elaborate than saying “salt”. Many of these drinks could be replaced by versions of salt water, and while they might then not taste as good, they would still be loaded up with electrolytes. Similarly, prior to the development of these products, athletes often got themselves “refueled” by eating small salt cubes when drinking water at games. Words like electrolytes are games companies play to both make their product more memorable and more impressive without actually saying anything at all.

Now, I don’t claim that at any point these companies are lying, nor that I wouldn’t do the same were I in their job. But, being a consumer (and one who uses those aforementioned products myself) I feel that I am allowed to nit-pick technicalities, even if just to be difficult.

But, are these companies and their “electrolytes” the only culprits of advertising that says nothing while saying more? Definitely not. My recent favorite example came up when cooking with a friend of mine. We could not help but recalling the food commercials that advertise, “now with more taste”… I think if you examine what you read and listen to you’ll find that you too have heard this phrase. A common way for a company to release a newer version of a product and say it’s improved, even if it has perhaps only been repackaged (note – it’s possible there were also changes made… I have not actually done research into these ideas).

So, “now with more taste,” what does that mean? Well, I think our first impression is that the food is more delicious (assuming of course we’re discussing food). But, perhaps it’s more thought-provoking to describe this as meaning “flavorful”. Interesting… How many flavors are there in the world? Do they all come from taste or do some come from smell too? Would those be the same? Let’s assume they are. So what has flavor? What could have more flavors?

Chocolate has flavor. I love chocolate. And more ‘chocolately’ chocolate – that just seems to be a huge upgrade. How about something less obvious - orange juice. A common (though not exclusively) breakfast beverage. Intuitively, I would suspect “freshly squeezed” orange juice to be more flavorful than orange juice from concentrate, and I personally prefer it. But, what if those oranges had gone bad? I think we can all agree that the orange juice would not be as pleasant, but would it be less flavorful? Would it have less taste? Or does it still have more taste, more flavor, and we just don’t find that appealing.

How about a spaghetti picture? The spaghetti, pre-cooked, pre-decorated is relatively bland, but I’ve been known to munch on a piece from time to time. Doesn’t that spaghetti have more taste once slathered in clue, paper and glitter? I can only assume it does, though I am certainly not attracted to that sense of increased flavor. From here it would be easy to continue down the road of “things with flavor that become less desirable when they get more taste,” but not all of those lead to charming mental pictures.

So, while I don’t mean to say that all things advertised as “now with more taste” are bad or lying. Similarly, athletic beverages do indeed have electrolytes, even if that is true for a common breakfast juice. What I hope becomes a take-away from reading this is a healthy skepticism when listening to and reading advertisements. Think about what is being said before assuming that it’s something that matters.