From: rep@thor.genrad.com (Pete Peterson)
Newsgroups: misc.fitness
Subject: Deceptive Advertising (was Re: NordicFlex Gold, Amazing product!)
Date: 26 Jan 1993 08:39:07 -0500
Organization: GenRad, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.genrad.com
Keywords: unrealistic, advertising, expectations

In article <1993Jan25.155332.13480@doug.cae.wisc.edu> wittmann@engr.wisc.edu (art wittmann) writes:

>Ad claimed the change we where seeing was a result of using the machine.  I've
>come around to thinking that it was probably just a bad skin reaction, 
>probably the subject had some reaction to the cloth that covers the bench.

Gee, I didn't think of that.  Perhaps the cloth was treated with some
wonderous organic solvent that passed through the skin and dissolved the
subcutaneous fat.  This might have caused the skin irritation resulting in
the hair loss.   Wouldn't explain the head-hair change though.

Can they do silicone muscle bulges?

>|>  >Gotta love advertising!
>|> Do you really expect advertising which straightforwardly describes a
>|> product and its relationship to other products in a neutral, unbiased way?
>
>No, I prefer the ones like this that insult our intelligence.

If you like having your intelligence insulted, you will probably enjoy
99.9% of the advertisements on television.  Most of them give absolutely NO
REAL INFORMATION about the product, but try to induce you to buy it by
causing you to make irrational associations or draw invalid conclusions.
It's much more fun not to be insulted, but enjoy the fact that you see
through their techniques, while wondering if ANYBODY could really take them
seriously.  Have you ever been stopped by a gorgeous girl driving by,
asking you to verify the brand of jeans you were wearing?  Ever had to
participate in an auction to buy a bottle of watery, tasteless beer?

Sometimes good advertising people (is this an oxymoron like good lawyers?)
can present truth, facts or statistics in a deceptive fashion.  There was a
book, many years ago, called "How to Lie With Statistics".

Although it's not a TV ad, here's a particularly nice example from a Nordic
Track brochure of a few years ago.  I've tried to approximate the nice
colored bar graph with rows of "X" characters.  This graph shows the VO2
consumption while doing various exercises at a heart rate of 145,
presumably by the same subject.


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX        32.9 Nordic Track
XXXXXXXXXX                                     29.2 Exercise Bike
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX						   30.3 Rower
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX								   29.9 Shuffle Ski Machine

0       29      30      31      32      33      34
   Volume of Oxygen Consumed at Heart Rate 145


Now, looking at this chart, if you just looked at the bars, because of the
suppression of the points in the 0-29 region, you would tend to conclude
that the Nordic Track was about 3 times as good as the exercise bicycle in
this particular property.  In fact the chart shows that Nordic Track is
only about a 12.7% improvement, NOT a 200% improvement as the bar lengths
would indicate.  It's only about an 8.6% improvement over the Rower.

These are (presumably) accurate, honest data, presented in such a way as to
lead the careless viewer to a false conclusion.

>You probably have an amazing career in advertizing ahead of you.

Shudder!  I can't imagine any competent engineer succeeding in advertising
or marketing unless he were fundamentally dishonest.

I'm greatly amused that somebody took my reply seriously enough to believe
that it was supposed to be a serious reply to your posting.  I find it hard
to believe how many obviously non-serious postings are taken seriously by
Usenet readers.


	pete peterson
	rep@genrad.com
	(508)369-4400 x2478; Home: (508)256-5829 (Chelmsford, MA)

Newsgroups: misc.fitness