Cheating, lying, and stealing are in fact successful survival strategies...

For a fly-by-night, but not for companies that rely on repeat purchase, those with established brand names and other assets. No company with something to lose would formulate a strategy based on fraud.

 

For a fly-by-night, but not for companies that rely on repeat purchase, those with established brand names and other assets. No company with something to lose would formulate a strategy based on fraud.

If that was true, Wriggley's Gum and Cadbury would not be suing each other over false advertising claims about whitening, bad breath and health promoting attributes of gum? Also, P&G would not be suing (and getting sued) by Unilever and Henkel. Or are those companies too small to fall within your claim of "relying on repeat purchases", "brand names" and "other assets"?

 

Advertisers make things up all the time. Why would they carefully pick prime numbers for both - "43 of 67"? People are attracted to unusual things - those are some rare yet plausible numbers.

Marketing walks down to R&D to ask for phrases that might be true or had plausible deniability because the phrases had positive feedback from focus groups.
They are also masters at making a claim within a claim. Look closely at the Camel cigarette ad posted early in this thread. Can you spot the red herring about doctors (survey was asked to 113,000 of doctors), ( by three major research organizations) the blurring of facts (the gist of the survey). Then the hair splitting (the brand named most often - (the ad doesn't say if the doctor mentioned Camel or the researcher)).
Any reader would agree, even doctors smoke, those doctors smoke camels.

 

but not for companies that rely on repeat purchase

I believe in caveat emptor. The key is to defraud people without them realizing it. This is surprisingly easy apparently. Astrology and psychics are extreme examples. Televangelists. Many car ads. "Healthy" breakfast cereals. On and on.

 

"Healthy" breakfast cereals.

"With juice Toast and Milk, Trix becomes part of a balanced breakfast"
Kind of like, "with seat belts, airbags, and collapsing steering columns, razor blades are part of a safe car interior."

 

Thank you Guys

I think we are well off topic now,

 

Mod: Thread Closed.