Advertising is a tricky business. Literally.
Take Canadian Tire鈥檚 鈥淚ce Truck鈥� commercial.
鈥淐anadian Tire knows the last thing you need in the middle of winter is a truck that won鈥檛 start,鈥� says the Canadian Tire guy, Gary, the affable everyman. 鈥淪o to prove our Motomaster Eliminator battery with AGM is reliable, we鈥檙e freezing it to minus-40 and instead of testing it in John鈥檚 truck, we鈥檙e testing it in one we custom-built out of ice.鈥�
It is true that Canadian Tire has done extensive testing of this battery at very low temperatures, but it is misleading to say they are 鈥渇reezing鈥� the battery. A battery that is actually frozen will not start a vehicle and can, in fact, be dangerous.
This particular battery uses something called Absorbed Glass Mat technology. The electrolytes that give you the power to start your car are not free liquid inside the battery, but absorbed into glass mats that act as an insulator alternated with lead alloy plates. This makes the fully-charged battery resistant to freezing, which is a very good thing in a Saskatchewan winter.
Talking about the technology, however, makes for boring as hell advertising.
Putting it into a truck made of ice is a great test because, what is colder than ice, right?
When you see a 30 second spot on TV, you generally don鈥檛 analyze the crap out of it.
You think, 鈥榦kay, that ice truck is pretty cool. And the visual impact
When you really think about it, though, you realize that ice can鈥檛 be any colder than the ambient air temperature. So, even if the battery was cooled to -40, sticking it into an ice truck isn鈥檛 any more of a test than putting it in a regular truck.
In fact, once the battery is cranking, it is arguably better off if anything in the ice truck than a metal truck since ice is a good insulator.
The point here is that advertisers use these kinds of misleading tricks all the time to create an advantage for their products.
That is not to say the Motomaster Eliminator is not a very good battery. It鈥檚 just not very smart to buy it on the basis that it started an ice truck.
It may well be one of the most reliable batteries out there, but contrary to what Gary suggests the scenario in the commercial does not prove any such thing. It merely shows that a brand-new batter subjected very briefly to very cold temperatures will still turn over an engine, something that could easily be claimed by just about any battery on the market.
This particular technique is the 鈥渕isleading visual.鈥�
This is not one of the more onerous uses of the technique, however. You buy a battery, it works for a number of years, you replace it. No harm, no foul.
Other uses of the misleading visual can have more serious implications. The use of sex, for example, to create a positive association in consumers鈥� minds with beverage alcohol has been linked to alcoholism.
One of the greatest challenges facing North Americans鈥� health is obesity and one of the culprits behind that is the fast food industry. Fast food advertisers have long used various techniques for creating the illusion of freshness and health for their products. One good example is using brown shoe polish to colour hamburgers making them look much more appetizing than the limp thing you get when you actually order it.
Finally, the now standard practice of photoshopping models鈥� bodies is serious cause for concern according to the American Medical Association (AMA).
鈥淎dvertisers commonly alter photographs to enhance the appearance of models鈥� bodies, and such alterations can contribute to unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image鈥攅specially among impressionable children and adolescents,鈥� the AMA said in a statement. 鈥淎 large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images of unrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems.鈥�
Advertising is most impactful because we don鈥檛 really think critically about it. It is almost like background noise, but it can have a very powerful effect if we don鈥檛 pay attention.
