Run, Spot, from marketing ploys

Sea salt. Sea salt run. Run, salt, run.

A commercial this morning told me all about a new, healthier soup that replaced its sodium ingredient with sea salt.

Now, sea salt is widely considered to be healthier than common table salt, which has been refined to nearly pure sodium chloride, but should we really tout sea salt as a sodium replacement?

While it contains lots of other minerals, sea salt is, at its very core, sodium itself.

My wife laughed at the commercial, pointing out that it is all about marketing.

I remember marketing. It’s the art of selling you less and convincing you it’s a good deal.

A candy bar company, for example, touted the fact that it had produced a candy bar with “1/3 the calories” of its regular bar.

Turns out the reduction was easy to do. The company just cut a third off its regular candy bar and charged the same amount for this “diet special.”

You pay more. You get less. And you like it?

Sometimes it pays to read the fine print.

Consider, next, the old infomercials that touted things like “genuine faux pearls,” anything called a “diamelle” or even things that were “gold filled.”

While it sounds like a great deal, “genuine faux” means fake. Those pearls are plastic.

Another marketing scheme is to use words that have more than one meaning.

Sometimes “light” refers to color and not calories.

One beer company in the early 1990s marketed their product as being in “specially lined cans.”

The FTC was not amused to find out that the company was referring to the graphic design of the logo printed on the can and not to any product-enhancing coating inside the can.

Marketing also loves to yell about things as if they are a HUGE deal.

FAT FREE sodas, for example.

Items that have sugar in them do not always contain fat. Sugar is a low-fat food product. Sugar, however, MAKES us fat because it contains huge amounts of empty calories.

“Cholesterol Free” vegetable oils. Ummm….cholesterol is found only in animal products. All vegetables are cholesterol free.

I think my favorite marketing ploy gives the illusion that you are getting more for your money.

Laundry soap is notorious for this one.

You see a colorful badge plastered on the label that says, “Get 20% More!”

Then you read the fine print. All you are really getting is 20 percent more in that 120-ounce container than you would in a 100-ounce container. Never mind that the product only comes in the 120-ounce size.

Marketing. Constantly thinking up ways to fool all of us Dick and Janes.

Where’s Spot? I need to go for a walk.