Some of my favorite meaningless advertising phrases

[trønderen]

Publicly announced shrinkflation: Smaller pack - same great taste! In my opinion, for quite a lot of cheese, 'Best before' should be replaced with 'Best after' (without changing the date).

[trønderen]

As shown on TV (I never owned a TV set. And if I did: So what?)

[Choroid]

The BIG lie This item is in 10 peoples cart ONLY 3 remain available REVISIT the link 1 hour latter same message with the same stats

[englebart]

And the other 95% is NOT water and sugar.

[Jeremy Falcon]

For a limited time only...

Jeremy Falcon

[trønderen]

In Norway, we see a marked price rise six weeks before Black Friday. If you claim some "Before" price, "Now only xxx", that "Before" price must have been effective for at least six weeks. So for Black Friday, they can claim a significant discount, down to the ordinary, year-around prices.

[trønderen]

Surimi, the taste-like-crab fish product, was for many years sold in Norway as 'crab sticks' - the English term. After it became popular, some manufacturers started selling then as 'krabbepinner' - 'krabbe' = 'crab', 'pinner' = 'sticks'. They were fined, because the product contains zero percent crab, and they had to stop marketing it as 'krabbepinner'. So they market it as 'crab sticks' - that is accepted. Note that approx. 99.9% of all Norwegians from 12 years up understand English quite well. (The percentage knowing what 'surimi' is, is far lower :-))

[trønderen]

Nelek wrote:

Lemon drink with 5% natural lemon.

Our local brewery (for both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks) were forbidden to market their lemon soda as 'Real lemon soda'. They objected: Sure, you can't claim that is is a 'lemon drink' unless it contains at least 5% lemon. Their 'Lemmy' soda contained 8% lemon! After three quarters of a year, the court decided to let them sell their 'Lemmy' again, provided they market it as 'Lemon soda' - not as 'Real lemon soda' ...

[trønderen]

A friend of mine describe his home made product as '4% water'. He doesn't advertise it in media, though.

[trønderen]

Whenever I see 'up to', as in 'up to 40% better than the competition', my instinctive reaction is: 'So you have search the market for the very worst product you could find, and you are no more than 40% better than that?'

[trønderen]

Unit price: 4.50 Buy two for only 10.00! One of the big chain stores in Norway was recently caught in several cases of this kind of advertising. When confronted by journalists, the store owners insisted that the cash register would charge only 9.00 for two. I am not at all trusting that it was the case the day before the journalists turned up :-)

[CodeWraith]

Don't say anything about the Crap[^]. It rarely lets you down, but my favorite is the Crap 27SL. :-)

I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.

[trønderen]

For several decades, Pepsodent toothpaste was marketed (at least in Norway) as "With irium". In my childhood, I used a different toothpaste (with fluoride), but I remember friends arguing in favor of Pepsodent, as it was with irium. When 'truth in marketing' became stronger, the manufacturers of Pepsodent were pressed on this 'irium'. They had to admit that it was their name for water. The marketing trick was that they had never claimed that Pepsodent was the only toothpaste with 'irium', and they had never claimed that 'irium' had any particular properties - only that Pepsodent contained 'irium'. Contained water. That was an indisputable truth. In the HiFi world you see a huge amount of terms, usually as three- or four-letter abbreviations, used to prove the quality of the product. I have actually been thrown out of a stereo shop because I laughed right into the face of a salesman: That is bullshit - show me what connections that amplifier has! That's what I care about. He refused to: If you deny that this and this and this is essential to the sound quality, then I have no amplifier to sell you! ... I left the store with a big laugh.

[trønderen]

Not exactly advertising, but sort of related: Norway does not accept nuclear weapons on its ground. USA very much wants to establish advance stores (or whatever the correct term is!) of military equipment in Norway for fighting The Great Enemy - including atomic bombs. We agree to advance stores of conventional equipment, but not nuclear weapons. When this was discussed in media a couple of decades ago, one town after the other declared themselves as 'atom free zones'. It was pointed out that this would make those town awfully empty.

[trønderen]

Pro

[jmaida]

Non-stick laser powered eco-friendly all natural

"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger

[trønderen]

Visiting a friend running an ice cream stand, I laughed at his cans of pineapple ice cream topping (actually, I never tasted pineapple topping on ice cream, but apparently there is a market for it), marked 'New improved formula!' The contents declaration read: 'Crushed pineapple, sugar, water'. What is there to make any great new 'improved formula' in crushed pineapple, sugar and water? My friend took my reaction as a grave insult. Maybe they had removed something. Maybe the amount of sugar was changed. Who was I to pretend to know anything about how to make a pineapple soft ice topping? Oh well. I caved in and left him with his confidence that there had been a real improvement in the formula of that ice cream topping, of great significance to his ice cream stand.

[trønderen]

Custom I drive a Ford Transit Custom. Sure, when I bought it, I did select options. You do that whatever car you buy.

[jeron1]

But wait, there's more!

"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle

[trønderen]

You call a service center at 04:00, and are served an automatic answering message: "We are sorry, but at this moment we have an extraordinary amount of customers calling in, causing as very high traffic. Please be patient." Please be patient while we try to wake up that customer service guy - he is sleeping heavily! When you get that same message (and 20 minutes waiting time) whether you call at 10:00, 14:00, 20:00, 22:00, 04.00 or 08:00, I begin loosing my faith in that 'extraordinary' number of customer requests that they claim to have.