The Old Coot is not 100 percent!

This article is 83 and 41/100 percent factual. Which is quite high for me; I usually stretch the truth and bend the facts more than that to fit my opinion. Most old coots do this to some degree, but nowhere near as flagrantly as politicians and corporate marketing executives. We’re lily white compared to those masters of deception. 

Take the marketing executive that came up with the ad campaign for Zicam. It claims that people who use Zicam at the first sign of a cold will reduce their symptoms by 45 percent. The stuff works to some degree, as does any product with zinc as a prime ingredient. But, 45 percent? That’s just pure fiction (in my old coot opinion, which is why I lowered my “factual” score by 16 and 59/100 percent). 

How do you measure 45 percent less cold symptoms? Count the number of times a Zicam user sneezes and compare it to a non-user? Count the number of tissues used over the duration of a cold? There is no scientifically accurate mechanism to make a claim as specific as 45 percent. The marketing staff made it up, cleverly selecting a specific number to make the assertion sound credible. It is a clever ploy, much more effective than saying, “Your cold symptoms will be reduced.” (Now comes my second favorite, and overused, old coot reaction.)  “Bull!”

How about the Ivory Soap people? They’ve claimed their soap to be 99 and 44/100 percent pure since 1895. Pure what? The chemical lab that analyzed the soap determined that 99 and 44/100 percent of the ingredients were fatty acids and alkali; only a small fraction consisted of other materials. Thus, the claim of 99 and 44/100 percent pure? If you define pure as fatty acids and alkalis. Not my definition of purity. But, it made good ad copy, and is still in play 121 years later. 

Ivory’s, “It floats,” ad campaign has an interesting history as well. A worker in the factory forgot to turn off a mixing machine and whipped in too much air. The company decided to sell the “ruined batch” of soap anyhow and pretend it was okay. They got letters! Customers loved this floating soap. They didn’t have to fish around in the bathtub for a sunken bar. I don’t know if the worker got a bonus, but his mistake became the standard operating procedure and kicked off the “It floats” campaign in 1895. 

And people wonder why old coots like me are such skeptics. We’re not skeptical; we’re realistic. We know when we’re being fed pabulum by the media, the politicians and the marketing campaigns of big corporations. Especially the pharmaceutical companies that won’t be happy until every person in this country is ingesting a costly collection of medicine on a daily basis. From cradle to grave! Thus ends my 83 and 41/100 percent factual rant of the week. And, a warning, “Beware of ads that use percentages in their claims (and many do). They are always pure BULL!”  

Comments and complaints can be sent to – mlessler7@gmail.com.