"Marketing is the art of making something seem better than it really is" (Suso Banderas, Randomizing sample sig quotes (2000)). Through advertisements, in their many forms, Businesses are using flashy lights and sounds to deceive us, convincingly. There are many forms of deceptive advertising, and every one seems to use a different method, one of the most common means of this, however, seems to be the inclusion of some kind of disproportional or inaccurate mathematical quantity that supports the lie or deception that the advertiser is attempting to use as a point. "There are three kinds of lies," according to Disraeli, "lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Quite often the inclusion of any statistic in a marketing scheme gives it more of an edge than others. For instance, most car insurance commercials try to convince you that their company will cost you less money than any of the others. Recently, Domino's pizza ran a campaign claiming that, through a national taste test average, their pizza had been chosen as the best. But, as one man astutely observed, “If you do some research into other taste tests, you’d be hard-pressed to find one in which Domino’s won” (Bret Thorn, May 2010). Many of these statistics seem true at first, especially after hearing people basing all further arguments off them, but they proceed in this manner to the point which the invalidation of a single fact decimates the conclusiveness of the argument.
In reality, most statistics, though based on true and unbiased samples, can be stretched and skewed by an observer to mean just about anything he may want it to. An executive of an airliner assured a man, afraid to board his plane, that "the odds are a million to one that your plane will have a bomb on it." The man, given this sound statistic, was still worried, and was reassured, "If you want better odds, carry a bomb on board yourself. The odds are at least a billion to one that your plane will have two bombs on it."
Even simply not telling the whole truth allows researches to be able to convince many of us that their product, or their position, is the better choice. Some doomsayers criticize the growing number of teenagers in the United States, citing the fact that forty percent of the population of Americans are under the age of twenty, failing to mention that more than fifty percent of the population was under the age of eighteen during the year 1776. One man, supporting improved educational qualities in the nation, stated that 220 new libraries had been built within the last fifteen years. In the same time, however, fifteen-thousand frozen yogurt distributors, ten-thousand pizza parlors, and over nine-thousand bowling alleys had been erected. Ultimately, "statistics are like a bikini. What the reveal is suggestive. What they conceal is vital" (Aaron Levenstein)
Many companies will say on their advertisements that their product was proved faster, safer, more effective, stronger, longer lasting, or in some way better than a leading competitor. These methods bypass any and all negatives of the product, Such as the possibility that the product was superior in only one aspect, such as strength, but had been out done in another field, such as safety. One could think battery acid as a fingernail polish remover, incredibly effective, but liable to take of the fingernail as well. Another possibility is that the product was superior to its competitor in every aspect, but inferior to another five competitive companies. The advertiser accents the one hazy positive, bypassing completely the significant negatives.
Many of the causes of faulty facts and inaccurate depictions can be found in the fine print below an advertisement. Two rival television stations, NBC and CBS, both bragged in the same edition of the New York Times, one on page 94 the other on page 96, that they had "The biggest average nighttime audience." Many people would ask how this could be true; many people should have read the fine print. Underneath the NBC advertisement the source of their data was cited as the National Nielson reports for the season to date. The CBS statistic, on the other hand, was extracted from the latest Nation Nielson report. The same concept can be used in just about any advertisement. Changing the units on a measurement is a sure fire way of producing bias. For instance, measuring the amount of oil lost in the gulf in "gallons" of oil, instead of the more correct "barrels" of oil, simply to show the public a higher number. Or, In the case of Good Housekeeping and McCall's magazines, having statistics based on these measurements. These two competitors each stated that their magazine contained the most information, Good Housekeeping claiming that it had more editorial "pages," and McCall's claiming that it had more editorial "lineage." these conflicting measurements at first would create a confusion, but, as lineage changes based on page size, it is possible for both to be true. McCall's magazine would be the winner of the competition, with much more information crammed onto smaller, more economical, sheets of paper.
Many people consider good research to be the key to good marketing. This belief leads to changing advertisements with more creative and eye catching themes. David Ogilvy emphasized in one statement that it was factual information that persuaded consumers to purchase a product. To this claim, the Purina Dog Food Company created a campaign based largely on facts, stating that feeding reluctant dogs its dog food would transform them into "eager eaters." Months later, when Jack B. Haskins made the claim that it was emotional reactions within consumers that inspired them to purchase a product, Purina changed their motto to "All you need is love, and Purina."
Many companies even work hard to skew the results of research, by finding areas in which studies are being conducted, and concentrating much of its advertising strength on that area. Often times these attempts to invalidate another companies results are invalid, as many believe it is not even the hard data that determines the verdict of weather or not a particular marketing campaign is successful or not, but what the advertisers do with the data. The inescapable fact is that the research and the statistics don't make the difference. A new creative concept does, because it appeals to you, the individual, the person, not you, the statistic.
Some sensible research, however, produces dependable, helpful results. One of the valuable techniques it the "split-run" technique, in which to trials are run in the exact same way with very little variation or bias within the sampling method. Research is a valuable, valid, and often indispensible aid to business. One businessman once commented on the recent sales decrease, saying that "of course sales are down. My men are too busy writing research reports to sell anything." The danger, however, is the over dependence on those facts.
Regardless of research reports, people act according to their personal desires and interests. Research data can't keep up with you because you keep changing. You're not sure today how you're doing to feel, what you're going to do, or how you will act tomorrow. Therefore the research experts can't possibly know. Conditions, feelings, stimuli, all change, and you change accordingly. One researcher admitted that people are "as intricate and ever-changing as the weather." The danger in much of advertising "is not the science fiction fear that machines will begin thinking like men, but that men will begin to think like machines."
One realist, A. Edward Miller, told a story in which "the UN managed to wire together all of the existing computers in the world to make the most powerful computer setup ever. The first question that was asked was "Is there a God." The machine whirred for a few seconds and spit out the response "Now there is!" A similar computer was asked to translate the ancient Russian proverb, "time flies like an arrow," into English. the machines translation was "Time flies enjoy eating arrows." Based on this, the computer, comprised of raw facts and data, can never replace human judgment.
"It is sometimes argued that advertising really does little harm because no one believes it any more anyway. We consider this view to be erroneous. The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects, their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe, and that it teaches ‘the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind: words, images, and ideas.’ The real danger from advertising is that it helps to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious non-material possessions: the confidence in the existence of meaningful purposes of human activity and respect for the integrity of man" (Paul Baran, 1964). That being said, why is it that so many men and women try so hard to convince us of something using "facts" that have been so skewed that no accurate conjecture could possibly be made from them? To what extent must we pursue the defamation of the idea that humanity takes part in the practice of some meaningful endeavor? The focus of thousands of hours of research should not be the deception of one's fellow man, "life's too short to sell things you don't believe in."
