Subway spokesman and occasional thin guy Jared Fogle may soon be out of work thanks to a new FTC rule banning commercial testimonials that warn "results not typical" or "individual results may vary." Under the new rule, marketers using, say, body builders to advertise weight loss pills are also going to have to show an average lardass whose results might be more typical. You can guess how advertisers are reacting to the change...
I've been saying for a long time now that if assvertisers had to show the actual people who buy these products before they bought them, while they were using them, and the actual results of using them, those results would be so dismal that people would know it's not an actuality that's being sold to them, it's a fucking pipe dream that isn't about to come true (not permanently anyway, and probably not safely either). And WTF is up with saying assvertisers need to show "an average lardass"? Talk about stereotyping the people who are spending their hard-earned dollars on this bullshit. Not only do we get no respect just because we're fat, now we get no respect because we're buying into the assvertisers' claims in order to get thin enough to get the respect we can't get any other way (maybe whacking these morons up side the head with a clue by four might work?).
The revisions have drawn sharp criticism from product manufacturers, advertising agencies and trade groups who say it is the "aspirational" theme of their ads that motivates consumers to purchase their goods. Show less than the ultimate achievement, they say, and consumers are less likely to buy.
No shit, Sherlock. You aren't selling something that actually works, you're selling a dream that people want to work, and are willing to fork over the bucks in hopes that they'll be one of the few in that "results not typical" that loses the weight and keeps it off forever (yeah, which is why those assvertisers always have new spokespeople for every new commercial, because the people who said they used the product successfully didn't stay successful forever).
I don't advise reading the comments after this article, too many of the commenters have drunk the OMGOBESITYEPI-PANIC kool-aid and have bought the hype shouted by those assvertisers and big pharma and the medical community who have their eyes on their bottom line and are ignoring the health of the people to whom they pitch their snake oil in favor of lining their pockets with billions of our dollars.
WeightWatchers, Nutrasystem, Jenny Craig, WLS, Bowflex, and any other company selling gym equipment, diets, or surgery as a guaranteed way to get and stay thin/healthy may just go out of business if these rules are adopted and they have to obey "truth in advertising". Or maybe I'm being too optimistic about the sense that people who buy this shit really have. Are they so invested in getting thin (at any cost) that each and every one of them will think that they are in that 5% of people who successfully lose weight and can keep it off more than 5 years, despite all the evidence to the contrary?
I would love to see a commercial for Bowflex that has a person like me using it the way those tanned, ripped, toned hotties in their current commercials supposedly do. I would bet my life that someone like me would never get even close to looking like one of them just by using a Bowflex for 15 to 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week (well, maybe in 20 or 30 years, but certainly not in 6 weeks, let alone 6 months).
I want to see all those past spokespeople for all those diets and what they look like now (because what do you want to bet that NONE of them are still following any of those diets, and NONE of them have managed to maintain that so-called *cough*photo-shopped*cough* weight loss?).
H/T to Dizzy at I'm Jus' A Lil' Dizzy!--Dizzy Dayz: Keeping Up With Our Spinning World
No comments:
Post a Comment