Dear marketing gurus, don’t take consumers for idiots

Can a hand-washing liquid with added vitamins give any health benefits? Well, a consumer-product manufacturer claims just that.

Increasingly, making false claims and presenting distorted facts have become a trend to increase sales. Another such company brags that you can have all the nutritional benefits of an egg without eating one because their shampoos and conditioners are combined with all the good eggy things. A detergent company smirks because it sells soap bars in huge numbers by stating that these have "the cleaning power of blue and orange!" (What on earth could that mean?) Perhaps the epitome of a bizarre commercial is one advertising a "halal soap." It became so successful – in misleading consumers – that Professor Philip Kotler mentioned it in his book Principles of Marketing. But wait, there is another, even more bizarre (and outrageous) example I am coming to in a while.

It's not just the big corporations selling things by making out-of-this-world claims about their products. When I buy a piece of papaya, pineapple or a kilogram of oranges, the seller almost invariably endorses it as extremely sweet (kora mishti in Bangla). "Don't pay now; take it home and enjoy, and pay me only if it's sweet," they add without a wink. Of course, you will not do that, but instead pay for it in good faith. Depending on your luck, the fruit can be sweet or sour, but that has nothing to do with the seller's pitch.

Point to any item in a sweets shop and ask, "When did this come in?" The answer is always, "Just a while ago." Never will any seller say that the sweets were made the previous day or earlier. Before buying, you must rely on visual inspection, your experience with that seller, and market opinion.

But fruit sellers or sweets traders are petty operators compared to the corporations selling unnecessary things by creating a false sense of need with sleek advertising campaigns. When I complained about TV channels showing too many commercials, a friend reminded me of the Greek philosopher Socrates. His well-off disciples took him to a marketplace to show him all the luxurious things, while the more loyal ones were uneasy about how the master might react. But he only said, "How many things I can do without!" Then, my friend added what he had to say: the TV channels are doing their job of informing the public of its needs, which people wouldn't otherwise know of.

Of course, advertising is not only a consumer society thing. Politics, international affairs, warfare, mainstream news, social media and everything else use marketing to attract attention, manipulate public opinion, distort facts, and spread misinformation and disinformation. In 1997-98, when then US President Clinton was deep in the Monica Lewinsky mess, he tried to absolve himself by using a strongly worded, dramatically phrased, meticulously scripted sentence, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." He had.

President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair jointly launched a massive misinformation campaign on Saddam's imaginary stockpile of weapons of mass destruction to justify their 2003 military assault on millions of Iraqis. The US administration later admitted that much of it was a lie.

Duterte heavily manipulated public opinion in the Philippines before the 2016 presidential election using fake Facebook feeds. But don't make him the only one responsible. In 2013, Facebook, in a bid to increase its user base, started subsidising internet access to the platform on mobile devices in countries where cellular data was not affordable for many despite having smartphones. With 100 million people, the Philippines was the perfect ground for testing this out. Facebook offered them "free Facebook" without caring about how it might be abused by Duterte's campaign managers (marketing experts). He won, which everyone saw. But few realised that the bigger winner was Facebook. It has since been used worldwide to spread disinformation, one instance of which likely contributed to the 2017 Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. Amnesty International stated, "In the months and years leading up to the atrocities, Facebook's algorithms were intensifying a storm of hatred against the Rohingya, which contributed to real world violence."

In a sleek marketing campaign, again, the current Russia-Ukraine war is presented as a direct outcome of Putin's invasion. But the root cause of the conflict remains unaddressed, which Joseph S Nye, Jr, a professor at Harvard University and a former US assistant secretary of defence, makes adequately clear in his op-ed "What Caused the Ukraine War?" Most news outlets manipulate public opinion by putting the West on a high moral ground, making Moscow the sole villain.

The ultimate winner, however, is whitening creams. All consumer product makers sell it with the promise of lightening one's skin tone despite the product's high health risks. But the sellers portray it as a beauty enhancer, thus creating an otherwise non-existent need. This is the ultimate in marketing that is downright disgraceful, humiliating, racial, discriminatory, and devoid of morality or ethics.

Finally, you don't need a fancy hand wash at home. A simple soap is adequate to wash your hands.

Dr Sayeed Ahmed is a consulting engineer and the CEO of Bayside Analytix, a technology-focused strategy and management consulting organisation.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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