Touchable Hair is the Answer to Your Love Problems *SMILE*
My husband wondered why I was laughing in the shower (he worries about me sometimes.)
“It’s the reason you’ve dated a chain of Mr. Wrongs. Now watch as healthy, touchable hair lures many Mr. Rights.”
This is the sales pitch on my bottle of Aussie conditioner (which I bought for the bent & dent price not the slogan 
I’m so not kidding–verbatim.
(Surely this could be considered false advertising, which is serious business in the marketing world. Campbell’s soup had to remove their slogan “It’s good for you”, because, well, it’s not 
I am strangely intrigued by marketing strategies. I can’t help it. Maybe it has something to do with my minor in marketing that I pay closer attention, but the overall stupidity of the American consumer (I being one of them) is appalling!
Did you know that the bottled water industry is a multi-million dollar market that sells tap-water-grade water in a bottle? Many bottled water companies have been found to have lower standards for their water quality than tap water.
Is it just a coincidence that the most popular water brand, EVIAN, has a secret message if spelled backwards? I think not
Recently, I startled my husband when I bolted from the kitchen to tell him of my discovery about “Clorox Clean-Up” a neighbor had given me. The claim? Disinfectant for counter tops.
I noticed the bottle said “Safe for pets and children”. So I smelled it…nothing. Then I tasted it…nothing. I looked at the ingredients and found 99.99% water and .01% bleach. THAT’S TAP WATER!
I said, “They’re bottling tap water and selling it for $3! We’re so stupid!”
And as my brain is wont to do, a chain of thoughts took me from the former posts I wrote about dumbing down children in school. And I thought, “How convenient for the consumer industry that we believe anything they tell us.” Once we’re taught that “the experts know best”, there’s no end to our mindless following!
Just a fun thought…if you haven’t before, pay attention to marketing strategies. I think you’ll be humorously surprised!
Can you think of any examples of our consumer stupidity? Or how our gullible purchasing habits have deeper effects on our society?
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Tags: humor
humor | Word Warrior | 
February 16, 2009 10:08 am
lol! Have you seen the new “Aqua Juice”? Its watered down juice! The marketing on it says it has “less sugar”! Go figure, since the main ingredient is water! I thought it was so funny I called my DH right from the grocery store aisle to chuckle at the idea with him. Our children have been drinking “Aqua Juice” for years and we never even knew it!
Ummm , yes people don’t really read labels. Mucinex which is getting tons of commercials, is expensive and some people swear by is guaifenesin. Guaifenesin is better known as plain old boring Robitussin (not DM or PE or any other letters). While its true that Robitussin tastes nasty (the generic is worse), I really can’t see spending 4 times the amount just so I don’t have that taste.
Then there is the whole pain reliever PM thing. It’s nothing but a benedryl with your tylenol, advil, aleeve etc.
But the most recent one is the new super-fantabulous Imitrex that has come out now that the old Imitrex has gone generic (not any cheaper, just generic). The new super-fantabulous Non-Generic Imitrex is shhhhhh Imitrex with an Aleve (or naproxan sodium if you are a generic girl like me)
That is hilarious!
I have noticed it too.
I laughed my head off the other day when I drove by Hardees and they were advertising "Country Bacon & Egg biscuits"
I told Michael that sounds so much better than just plain old "Bacon & Egg Biscuits".
Nothing is just plain grape or cherry flavored any more. Now-days it has to have some dramatic adjective in front of it.
The whole “experts know best” mentality really has become pervasive since the 1950s–it was then that mothers were first told en masse that they were not good enough to take care of their homes or teach their children without the help of “experts.” Part of me believes that the rampant dissatisfaction with being a homemaker in the ’50s and ’60s had to do with precisely this sort of demoralizing cutting down that the average American woman was experiencing–just as the corporate world was offering her some confidence. I think it’s time we started reclaiming our own capability!
This is so true! I get a kick out of the restaurant menus: “Thick, juicy, tender, 16-oz sirloin steak from the hills of Kansas corn-fed Angus beef, topped with sauteed portobello mushrooms raised by hooded monks in the mountains of Italy….” when all it is is a dumb steak from the grocery store topped with slimy canned mushrooms.
Oh, here’s one: We live in farm country, and “Angus” is a term given to generic cattle to make them sound fancy. There are red Angus and black Angus, but they are plain old cattle. But you think you are getting something special. The local farmers and ranchers told my husband that. Wonder who thought that up?
People here buy a lot of bottled water because water in the rural upper mid-west is sometimes not potable. Some people who live on farms must use a reverse-osmosis system for their tap water, otherwise it is deadly.
Here in my town, our water is bad. Every 6 months, we get a letter from the town warning us that we have elevated levels of arsenic in our water. This is a cancer hot-spot. Our water looks like coffee coming out of the tap, and if you have white hair, it will dye it red, or ruin a white blouse in the wash.
We have to have a water softener, and then I filter it a second time with a Brita filter. My husband refuses to drink it even then, because it still tastes salty.
So, he buys a lot of Dasani. BUT (roll the drum) TOMORROW we are getting BDM water (that stands for Brown, Day and Marshall counties) actually pumped to our little town, and I CAN’T WAIT. We have waited 10 years for it!! Now we won’t have to buy softener salt, Brita filters, etc. \o/ and maybe can stop buying bottled water.
Another comment: Oh, Bethany, you are so right!
That’s great! funny.
My husband would worry about me too, but we have the same twisted sense of humor.
1 of the good things about bottled water – it’s not flouridated unless it says so on the labe.
Civilla – that’s just terrible! I’ve heard that there are areas in the US with sub-par water, but not undrinkable! The good news is that carbon-filtration really is very effective at purifying water. But true too, it can’t get everything out, such as some chemicals. Perhaps distilling the water after purifying it may help. It tastes a little stale to me, but it’s very effective. It gets flouride out too. I personally always used Britta for cooking/drinking water since college. The water tasted funny before filtering. Turned out a lot of agri-chems were being washed into our area’s water resevoirs. I was safe thanks to the carbon. A friend was living in military housing with her hubby while pregnant. They always used a Britta for all ingested water. They found out after their baby was born that their housing had old, highly-leaded pipes. Yikes! They and their baby were all fine and lead-free thanks to their precaution. So now, even though my area’s water seems fine, I don’t take the risk. We filter.
For those who don’t know, the carbon filtration just referes to natural charcoal. A lot of people provide their own water by using a rain cistern lined with natural charcoal, and it’s safe for ingestion. The charcoal has to be changed out every so often, but it’s an effective, low-cost plan.
By the way, I had no idea it was HAIR that drove men to distraction.
Hehe.
There is a commercial for Progresso canned soup…(canned soup!) touting the product as better than homemade!! I know it sounds incredible but I went and found it so that you’d believe me.
You can see it here.
Civilla:
In your case, yes, I would drink the bottled water! We used to have so much iron in our water that my hair turned red, as did all our clothes, fixtures, etc. Yuck.
And I didn’t think about the plus that bottled water doesn’t contain flouride–that may be enough reason for me to buy it. We have a filter that filters a great deal out, but probably not all.
Erin:
I think I just heard someone talking about the Aqua Juice and how it was just watered-down juice–it’s not a lie–it IS less sugar! I think most people are so busy they don’t even stop to think about things. Hmmm…wonder what watered-down product I could market
I don’t have an example, but I just wanted to say…the really fun part is teaching this to your children and watching them become skeptics of commercials. My 9 year old is all, “Oh mom, they’re just trying to make you think it’s great so they can get more money!”
That’s my girl!
Well, it depends on who’s making the homemade soup. Considering the disaster that was the dinner I cooked last night, Progresso canned soup would be better than my homemade soup.
This is not about a product, but about tv shows. When they would get ready to break for a commercial, they would say, “We’ll be right back!” and then go to several lengthy commercials. My son who was then 2 or 3 exclaimed, the first time he was aware of it, “Mama, they lied!” because, of course, they didn’t come “right back.”
I really can’t believe the aqua juice or the 99% water Chlorox spray! That is evil.
Clorox Clean-Up with Bleach is actually about 3% sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and about .5% sodium hydroxide. It is not tap water and will bleach whatever it touches. It disinfects like bleach too, killing 99.9% of bacteria. Tap water doesn’t do that.
It is, essentially, 1/2 strength bleach (i.e. regular bleach diluted with an equal amount of water)…and yes, they are overcharging for it. Thing is, if you make 1/2 strength bleach on your own, it will not retain its “bleachiness” for more than a couple of days. Clorox Clean-Up is buffered in such a way that it stays “bleachy,” for lack of a better word, for quite a bit of time.
If you made your own 1/2 strength bleach in very small quantities in a $1 spray bottle, you’d probably get exactly the same effect…but it’s a “convenience product,” I guess. =/
Consumers are SO gullible.
Lazarquita,
Hmmm…they have apparently changed the ingredients since my bottle…there were only 2 ingredients–water and bleach.
Thank YOU Christi for your comments about Mucinex. I’ve been telling my extended family this for years–IT’S ROBUTUSSIN, people! You can buy the store brand. Sure you have to take it more often, but it’s not some new wonder drug!
Bottled Water, most packaged food–as much as I have a truly heavy heart about our economic situation, I hope that people use it to learn about how to shop and cook economically.
Water and bleach break down into some benign sodium solution pretty quickly without buffering. The clorox stuff must have something else in it in order to be shelf stable.
The book Home Comforts is so great–I checked it out of the library and then I bought it. From it I learned that a dilute solution of bleach and water does better than almost anything else for sanitizing, and occupies my sink nearly every morning, and for pennies sanitizes everything. It’s also more environmentally sound because it breaks down so quickly.
My favorite is the pre-diluted anti freeze. It is 1/2 water, 1/2 antifreeze, but not half price—only $3 cheaper, on average. I choose to *GASP* dilute my own.
And no wonder I got “Mr. Right”, I used to have great hair! LOL