Virtually spotless…

“Virtually spotless” was how the dish detergent brand Cascade described its cleaning power on glassware. If you’re pausing right now and thinking that’s a functionally meaningless claim to make, congratulations, you have recognized the advertising trick known as the weasel word. Weasel words make statements sound great without leaving an advertiser on the hook legally when someone finds their wine glasses still have some spots on them. Similar statements like “helps,” for instance “helps prevent cavities” on a mouthwash or toothpaste might also render a claim suspect.

We grow up surrounded by a lot of bullshit and it helps to keep that in mind. You like Froot Loops? Cool, but don’t fool yourself that it’s good for you. “Part of this complete breakfast”? — I mean sure, once you add in the toast, milk, juice, actual fruit, peanut butter… matter of fact, at that point you could just pull the cereal right out of the mix and still have a complete breakfast, couldn’t you? It’s part of your complete breakfast the way parsley is part of your steak dinner. But they’re not lying.

That’s the trick, you know. If they could get away with outright lying to you, they would, as evidenced by the fact that labeling meat as Kobe Beef is a restricted thing in Japan but remains largely unregulated in the U.S.A., so there’s a lot of chicanery involved with basically presenting beef to a consumer that’s got a premium price for nothing more than a four-letter word.

Most of the time though there are laws cramping an advertiser’s style and so it’s time for the weaseling or other techniques preying on a buyer’s ignorance. Ever heard the term “parity product”? That’s something that has no real difference to it no matter who’s selling it to you, and one of the most famous examples is gasoline. Don’t get me wrong, octane ratings are a real thing, but if the octane is the same then it really doesn’t matter and you should be looking for the cheapest available. Yet millions are spent convincing you that you should go to this particular station and pay a dollar or more extra per gallon because their gas helps clean your engine. Which is true, gasoline is a natural solvent. All gasoline.

This technique is sometimes called “water is wet!” because an advertiser is basically saying they have something special going even though it’s just a common feature. It’s trying to get you really excited because their brand of pen contains ink. Or as a recent example, there are packs of beef jerky proudly advertised as “gluten free!” Which, yes, that does tend to be a feature of meat.

Anyhow, the phrase caveat emptor has been around for thousands of years for a reason. Buyer beware, indeed.