Reply #54: Marketers lie, but caveat emptor

[anigbrowl]

Sure, they talk about 'rugged...power...performance...' and rarely mention MPG (although they're desperately doing so right now). But that's what's sold up to now. Over in Europe 'MPG' is one of the first questions someone asks because they know they're going to be paying more for gas.

They do have stricter advertising standards over there, but most US car ads would pas easily since they're not making specific false claims. It is perfectly OK to sell a car by saying 'it's the best-looking car evah...you'll FEEL the difference!' despite this being an entirely meaningless sales pitch. The main difference on the other side of the pond is that drugs can not be marketed direct to the public, not least because you can't write yourself a prescription and therefore should be leaving such decisions to the doctor. The doctors do get marketed to like they do here of course.

Sure, car companies pay big bucks to commercial directors, photographers etc to make the car look awesome, but has there ever been a an ad campaign design to make a product look mediocre? Duh. What's needed is better media awareness on the part of the consumer via education, but even then you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink.