Ep. 147 – False Advertising: A Deep Dive into Consumer Expectations

Rob (00:00) got a somewhat panicked email today from the owner of the company, actually. It said, hey, we had a person call in, a customer call in, asking for these clear stair treads, ⁓ which we don't sell. They had read about it on a blog on our site. And when the customer service rep told them we don't sell those, they flipped their lid, claimed completely false advertising and threatened to sue lawsuits, ⁓ reporting you to Google and all this kind of crazy stuff. Don (00:31) What? All right, episode, we're live, we'll do it live. We did that last time, Rob, we can't do that again. We're back, episode 147, Gearing up to the big 150. You know what's funny? Now, I mean, we're on YouTube and we're doing visual stuff now in the last couple presentations. Dude, we own the YouTubes now. I didn't even really think about the fact that whatever our last few episodes where we were presenting. Rob (00:56) And we're live. Do it live. Do it live. 147, hard to believe. We are all over YouTube. Don (01:24) graphics and things like that. How are people going to follow along if they do old school traditional podcasts? They're not. They're just going to skip those episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Video killed the radio star? Is that what's happening? Rob (01:30) You're missing out. That's their problem. They need to get with the times, really. Yeah, yeah, that was the Buggles. I believe was the name of the Buggles. I believe. I think I think that was somebody fact checking me, but I believe it was. I'm going to do a live time. Yeah, yeah, hang on just a second. I'm going I'm going to live live check it. Don (01:44) That was the who? The Buggles. I have no idea. I don't know. Are you gonna fact check that right now on the, Okay. All right, well, we can edit this out if need be or not or whatever. yeah, video. no, neither one of us are gonna sing it. We'll at least not do that, so. Rob (01:59) when I read it No, no, no, no, no one's singing. All right, you ready? Guess who it The Buggles. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Yep. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Don (02:07) Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, you crushed it. You win. You win. Pew pew pew put in some graphics. Yeah. Alright, we're not here to talk about the bugles. Although that is a very good I mean you would crush trivia night on some random. Yeah, that was pretty good. Alright, here's what I thought and we're cut you're coming in blind on this one. This is a surprise to you. Normally we talk about what we're going to talk about before we talk about it. ⁓ Well, it's what makes us so good. It's kind of like smartless. We're doing a little smart list thing here, right? I mean nobody that you know there's a surprise factor. Rob (02:22) That was pretty good. Yeah, that was a good one. I have no idea what we're gonna talk about. Yeah. Don (02:38) All right, here's what we're going to talk about today. I have a visual aid, which I will hold up to the camera. Dun dun dun. Reese's. It's the pumpkin here. This is like I got the bag. It's a bigger. You can see it better. All right, the verdict is in. All right, the topic for today is we'll call it packaging, you know, false advertising, packaging, things like that, as you may or may not remember. Okay. Rob (02:44) Hmm Reese's Halloween. Yeah, that's the pumpkin edition. Yeah Okay. Don (03:08) There was a lawsuit against the Hershey's company brought on by consumers for false advertising for this product, which I now have upside down, right? Okay, here's what's going on. Reese's, obviously owned by Hershey. have all sorts of, they have Christmas trees, they have Easter eggs, they have all the different things. Reese's, Reese's, I don't know. We'll go with Reese's. ⁓ It's not Reese's. The product does not look like the packaging. Rob (03:17) I do not recall that. Is it Reese's or Reese's first? Reese's. Don (03:36) Okay, so this is an interesting aspect of advertising and things like that, right? If you open it up, product does not have the little face on there. It doesn't have the little jack-o-lantern face. Yeah, it just looks like, it's just a brown blob, dude. It's not a pumpkin. looks, anyway, point being is it doesn't look anything like this, right? Well, the verdict is in. So they sued, consumer sued, hey, my God. Rob (03:45) There's no eyes. Yeah, there's no eyes. There's no mouth. There's no... It is sort of shaped, sort of shaped like... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don (04:05) false advertising, false promises, all the falsities, whatever. Do you wanna take a guess on who won, the plaintiffs or Hershey's? Rob (04:13) Well, judging by the fact that you have that bag of Reese's there and there still is no face or no yet it's on the cover, I'm going to say Reese's one. Don (04:21) Reese's did win Reese's one the ⁓ but it's kind of an interesting topic. I guess, you in terms Rob (04:27) What was the rationale, I suppose? Don (04:30) So the plaintiff sued under deceptive advertising, kind of that umbrella. And anybody can go to NBC, CBS, ABC, all the articles are out there. It's basically the same thing, right? Basically the judge said that there is a quote ⁓ that doesn't prove quote a concrete economic injury, right? That's why the plaintiffs lost, right? Basically saying that, you know, hey, yeah. So the packaging has things on there that are not on the package, right? We're showing a photographic depiction of a jack-o-lantern. The product itself does not have the jack-o-lantern face on there, but, and I quote, it's not so flawed as to render them worthless, right? It's still chocolate, it's still peanut butter, you still ate it, right? The product itself is not worthless, right? It's not what it, you know. Rob (05:01) Yeah. Sure. Don (05:23) It just doesn't, it doesn't look like what it's, what they're saying it is, but it still is what it is, right? And the fact that there is no concrete economic injury, there's no way to award damages. You bought the Reese's, you're gonna eat the Reese's, yeah? Rob (05:35) I find that fascinating, because I would have guessed, had I not seen the bag and the thing, that the plaintiff would have won. ⁓ Don (05:47) Yeah, mean, plaintiffs have won for weirder things. I mean, it very clearly is a jack-o-lantern, you know? Rob (05:52) Because here's the first thing that comes to my mind, okay? If I walk into the ⁓ store and I look at, I'm going to play golf this weekend is what I'm gonna do. And I walk into the store, I go, my gosh, look at this sleeve of what appears to be these bright green golf balls. This is amazing. I'm gonna rock a green golf ball, which I would never do. Let's just be clear about that. But I'm gonna rock a green golf ball. And I got home and I opened the sleeve of golf balls and whoop. Don (05:56) Yeah, hit me. Okay. Yeah. Rob (06:22) But lo and behold, it's a white golf ball. While there is no loss in value because it's still a golf ball, right? That's not right. not what I, yeah. Like it seems like that's setting a really weird precedent to me. I wonder, I don't know. You know what I mean? Don (06:23) They're not green. Huh? Got it. It's not what you thought you would buy, right? Well, I know exactly what you mean. know exactly what you mean. we have, snake oil salesman is an expression because of false advertising. Even though people probably don't understand the history or why we say the things that we say. But five out of five doctors recommend Camel cigarettes. I mean, like in America, have 150 plus years of Rob (06:57) Sure. Yeah. Don (07:12) I'm going to call it completely false advertising. know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. World's best cup of coffee, right? ⁓ So, you know, it's, you know, I don't know. This is a tough one. mean, yeah, it is not what it's not what it is. not what it is. It doesn't look like this. You know what I mean? Like it does not look like this. However, it does have peanut butter on the inside and it is made of chocolate. Rob (07:15) It was voted the world's best hamburger. That's a weird one. It's kind of a weird one. Now. Well, that's so Don (07:41) You know what mean? So and it's not like Rob (07:41) let's be clear. Don (07:43) there was another lawsuit too about I think it was Arby's or whatever. It was, hey, your advertising shows this amount of meat on the sandwich. But when I get the sandwich, it's got this amount of meat. You know what I mean? Rob (07:52) Yeah. Well, that's a clear value. That's a clear misrepresentation of value. Right? Right. Don (07:58) Exactly. Exactly. So I think this isn't like that. That's not like, ⁓ you told me it was a foot long, and it's only six inches, or you told me it had half a pound of beef in there, but it's only got an eight, you know, Rob (08:07) Well, there's no, it would be hard to argue that there would be a taste difference between that blob and one with eyes and a mouth on it, right? It's still a delicious, delicious risi. Don (08:15) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This still tastes. Yeah. Yeah, except the the flavor or the shaped ones don't have the hardened edge. You know that little zigzaggy hardened edge. Yeah, I'm gonna break this baby open. You know, I mean. Rob (08:26) The ribbed edge. I was about to say, I don't know how you got that thing open and aren't taking a bite of that bad boy. It's delicious candy. Don (08:33) Yeah, I mean, I'll probably eat it on camera here in a little bit because it's starting to smell like starting to smell like Reese's in here for sure. But anyway, so I thought I found that interesting. That just kind of hit the news recently. And it did make me think about sort of falsities in packaging and falsities and advertising as a whole, you know. ⁓ And, you know, we've all I think we've all by now either for fun or accidentally or whatnot. You know, we've all bought something off of Instagram that we thought. This isn't this is this is BS. This is BS, right? And then it arrived in the mail three weeks later and went, it's totally not. It's totally not what and you knew it going in. You absolutely knew it going. This is too good to be true. Yeah, yeah. OK, what have you what have you bought off of an Instagram ad or Facebook ad along these same lines? Any anything come to mind? Rob (09:05) not yeah this is not Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was going to be a foot tall based on the pictures, and it's like two inches tall. Oof, ⁓ Don (09:31) I mean, I've got one I can go while you're Okay, this was years ago. I bought a Halloween mask. Okay, like a like a skull, like, like, like an entire skull head thing with like the jaw that moved with your jaw. You know what mean? Like the ad looks so good. And it was like, I mean, dude, it was like five bucks, 10 bucks. I mean, this was not like, you know, and I remember, I remember going, there's no way this thing is going to come looking anything close to this ad. Rob (09:33) I don't know that I have one off the of my head. Okay. Sure. Yeah. ⁓ well, yeah, that's a dead giveaway right there. Don (10:01) like it's like a team who kind of before team you know ⁓ and then it showed up and it was like yeah it's totally not it's not it's a rubbery Halloween now it's exactly what it probably should be it's like buying at buying something out of the back of a comic book in 1962 you know like not those aren't real x-ray glasses you know I mean like it's it's that kind of stuff right it was like okay Rob (10:18) Yeah, yeah, Don (10:25) But you know what I did? I I wore that Halloween mask, that Halloween, and it was successful and all was fine in the world. You know what I mean? ⁓ Rob (10:27) Yeah. I think it's great. Well, do have a funny enough. I have a real world client example of a false accusation claim for one of our clients that came in today. Okay. Pray tell. Okay. So one of our clients, ⁓ they ⁓ manufacture stair treads. Valley. I'm not afraid to talk about it. Be bold. Don (10:45) Whoa. Okay. Wow. Okay. Okay, Rob (10:57) Oak Valley Designs, company based in Carterville, Georgia. They're amazing. They make these carpeted luxury carpeted stair treads to replace a traditional carpet runner rug, right? They've been a long time client of ours. We've had great success with them. They're wonderful. Anyway, part of the work that we do for them is a lot of the SEO work on their site. Oh, and teaser alert, we're about to launch their new site, hopefully in the next 30 to 60 days or so. Don (11:06) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Rob (11:23) So you can check it out. But on the current site, a lot of the SEO development that we do ⁓ is an ongoing blog series, right? Where we write all of these blogs that kind of live behind the scenes. mean, most people aren't going to a carpet website to read blogs, but it's a nice way to sort of bring people into the filter from a search perspective, right? So we will write articles about all types of everything in your staircase, right? Whether it's, I don't even know, custom handrails to like, Don (11:42) Yeah, absolutely. Rob (11:53) Hey, know, stain for my hardwoods. The idea being that people are searching these topics, we want to bring them to our site so that maybe they'll go, ⁓ wait a minute, look at this. This is kind of cool and learn something and do that. That's the strategy. Well. Don (12:00) Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense. Love it. Rob (12:07) got a somewhat panicked email today from the owner of the company, actually. ⁓ It said, hey, we had a person call in, a customer call in, asking for these clear stair treads, ⁓ which we don't sell. They had read about it on a blog on our site. ⁓ And when the customer service rep told them we don't sell those, they flipped their lid, claimed Don (12:13) Okay. Rob (12:37) completely false advertising and threatened to sue lawsuits, ⁓ reporting you to Google and all this kind of crazy stuff. so the client naturally was panicking when you hear someone say, I'm going to sue you. And it was, and you know, the question was, what do you think about, like, what do we do? And I said, we don't do anything. And here's why. Nowhere on our site do we claim that we Don (12:42) What? Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Rob (13:05) sell these products, right? And in the blog, and I took a screen capture, in this specific blog where we talk about these transparent, specific stair treads, we specifically say, if this is what you're interested in, we recommend these two brands, that you go to these couple of stores and find these brands. So we actually tell them where to go find them. And it's interesting. So then I did a little bit of research on are blogs considered advertising, right? Don (13:22) Alright. Alright. Yeah, somewhere else, yeah. Hmm, it's an effective topic, Rob (13:35) And so it's, they can be, they can be, it depends on what you do, right? In this instance, ⁓ and I think the blanket definition is, well, if they are written to the effect of trying to push a particular good or service, then they could be considered advertising, right? So we kind of do fall under that to some degree, but. ⁓ Don (13:54) Okay, yeah, I that. Rob (14:00) Outside of that because we know where implicitly say we sell these things and we even tell people if you're interested in these this is where you should go buy them Not our site. ⁓ I said, hey, I think I think we're totally fine. This was the one-off people get disgruntled over over Strange things these days Everybody's on edge these days over something and this guy happened to be set off by carpet stair treads ⁓ Don (14:06) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's angry about everything these days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, if you've ever Googled like, you know, best rated microwave or best rated, whatever, you're going to get those blog posts that are going to be the top 10 microwaves of 2025. And those are very clearly directories to get Amazon referrals, fees and things like that. Right. So, I mean, I would I would absolutely consider that advertising. Right. That is a top 10, you know, of hate. And it's all referral clicks. Right. So I think that's advertising. Rob (14:48) 100 % Don (14:56) But I think, know, I mean, we do a fair amount of package design. That is one of our core competencies, you know, and there are specific rules around, you know, food advertising, you know, we do a lot of poultry, as we've mentioned in the past, you know, like there are things that you need to make sure that you do and you can't do false advertising, you know, ⁓ that's a weird one on Oak Valley, you know, ⁓ yeah, that is a very strange one. I don't know that that's, I don't, I wouldn't consider that, I mean, that's wires crossed and people being crazy, you know. Rob (15:16) Very strange. Absolutely not false advertising, would say it's smart marketing. Don (15:26) Yeah, it's not false advertising. ⁓ Is this false average? Forget about the lawsuit. Is this false advertising to you? Rob (15:37) slightly misleading. I'm gonna say it's it's it's slightly misleading. mean and I think here's how I think about it too like and this is Don (15:38) Okay, okay, I'm gonna agree. mean, hey, I'm a fan, yeah. I'm surprised. think about I'm totally interrupting and I apologize. Think about how many hurdles we leap through with all of our clients, legal department, you can't make that claim. You can't say that. Right on the medical side of life when we work with medical, you can't make claims of improving your quality of life, for example, right? Because how do you quantify that? Right? That's why there's so many videos or commercials of old people riding bicycles and you know, like, how do you say, oh, this surgery helped get you Rob (15:50) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. Oh, yeah. Don (16:17) to be a world, you know, so any time you make a claim, you know, you open yourself up to scrutiny and to litigation, right, which is interesting. ⁓ So, you know, this is kind of like, I'm surprised that Hershey's of all people would allow something like that through, like you think that going into that, you know. Rob (16:36) Here's the problem. Here's the problem with that specific example. To two old codgers like you and I, I just want to a delicious Reese's. I don't care. I don't care. Does it look like this? I don't care. As long as there's a Reese's in that package, I'm a happy guy. Don (16:44) Yeah. ⁓ yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No, it all looks the same when it's going down the street here, you know, so. Rob (16:54) Now, when I'm a four-year-old Spider-Man walking around the neighborhood for my first trick or treat, and I get this Reese's, and I want it to look like that, because I'm four, and I open it, and there's a little bit of disappointment. ⁓ I don't like that. ⁓ So, for the kids, for the kids, man. They let the kids down. But I do find that interesting, because I would have guessed that it would have gone the other way, actually. Don (17:01) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, doesn't look like a jack-o-lantern. Yeah. Yeah, not so flawed as to render them worthless. That sounds like judge speak, but you know, ⁓ they are still viable. They're still delicious. I just ate it. It's yummy. So Rob (17:33) Yeah, I wish I could, I kind want to reach over there and grab one. Don (17:37) Yeah, ⁓ they're good, man. Rob (17:41) It's a good candy. a good, in any shape, any shape or form, it's a good candy. Don (17:45) Yeah, it's just it's it's it's an interesting thing. know, sort of we do have this legacy of kind of embellishment and, ⁓ you know, false advertising in general, you know, and, and even if it's not false advertising, it's taking ⁓ from a consumer package perspective, there's a lot of taking things that aren't good for you and making them feel like they're good for you. Right? Things like that. Right? You know, like Rob (18:09) Really? Don (18:10) ⁓ A million I could feel like I can speak about this now because it's 20 years old But I remember working on Kellogg's we worked on all that stuff together, know, and I was astonished You know, it was always like a one-third less sugar right for Tony the tiger for Froggit flakes or for Apple Jacks or this or that it's like well Hey one-third less sugar does not mean it's good for you by any stretch of the imagination. However, it's a lot of their granola products at the time were ten times worse for you than Apple Jacks, right And here's this granola product that's the wholesome, it's earth, it's grains, and it's this and that. There's like 50X the amount of sugar in that thing than there is an actual like sugar bomb special. You know what I mean? And so, you know, it's a weird, know, consumers don't think that way, you know, like, you know, and the manipulation of ⁓ packaging and branding and kind of what the vibe is and what it looks like, and also store placement, right? Rob (18:43) Absolutely. Yeah, totally. Listen, advertisers are always going to push the limits in the name of capitalism. mean, at the end of the day, we're trying to sell a bunch of stuff, however we, know, however we can, we're gonna push it. We're gonna push it. Don (19:08) All that goes in Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's point 0005 % of honey in there. And it's going to be like made with honey bees all over the place. You know, honeycombs, it's gonna be like, Oh, it's natural. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So funny. So anyway, yeah, maybe we're maybe I'm starting to sound a little cynical here at the end of the podcast, you know, but it's it's a it's a funny thing. So it was topical. I am I am surprised that Hershey's won that one. I thought there would have been some type of weird. Yeah, it doesn't. Rob (19:27) Made with real honey! Yeah. Define real honey. Yeah. Yeah. Don (19:46) look like what it is, you know what I mean? Even though it barely clearly is what it is, it just doesn't look like it. anyway. Yeah, all right. Well, you got to surprise me next time. Rob (19:51) That's right. All right, well that was a good one. I like being surprised. All right, I'll do it. ⁓ Thanks everybody. You were about to ask me where the people can find us. And I'm gonna preempt with the answer and say they can find us on the YouTubes obviously, cause you're watching it. ⁓ Or online at mocktheagency.com or anywhere else on the digital sphere. We're not hard to find. Don (20:03) Where can the people find us? Yeah. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, the countdown to 150. We only got a few more. So alright. Alright, thanks everybody. Alright, Rob (20:17) I know. All right. Thanks everybody. Talk to you next time.