In advertising there is a language called doublespeak, which was designed to distort or disguise the meaning of even the simplest word that promoters use to sell their products. William Lutz, in his book, coined the term weasel words to mean words that advertisers use to appear to be making a claim for a product when in truth most of the claims are fraud, untruthful and doesn’t live up to their claims..
Everyday words such as help, new, improved, better, extra, etc, are only some of which are blatantly used by advertisers to make products appear more appealing, of high-quality, ‘better’ than other products or even better then the products they introduce to the market. If we look closely to the words that advertisers use to make their sales soar high, these words are actually empty or the opposite of what they are saying. Visual images on tv, magazines, newspapers along with a tricky but memorable tag line, enhances the salability of a product.
Everyday, we go thru our lives buying products without even paying attention to what we are purchasing. We tend to buy products thru recall, what we see in the television, hear in the radio or read in newspapers or magazines. We forgot to scrutinize these products to be able to get the value for our money. This article gave me a lot of insights on how we can detect if the product advertisement or the product itself is being true to their claims or not.
We must not be mislead just because one product says that it’s new or it‘s better or it’s special that in an instant we put it in our grocery bags. We must be careful, critical and observant in discovering what an ad is really saying. As what the William Lutz in his book said, every word in an ad is there for a reason, no word is wasted- and if no word is wasted, then as perceptive and intelligent consumers we must also not waste money on products that only banks on counterfeit claims.