Brandwashed Page 24
Another favorite among marketers is the “low trans fat” claim. Recall that several years ago, the FDA proclaimed that trans fat, the fat created when oils are hydrogenated during food processing, contributed to coronary heart disease, the biggest killer of Americans. Naturally, every food product under the sun was immediately proud to boast “zero trans fat” on its package. Problem is, products with “zero trans fat” (and by the way, thanks to labeling guidelines, these actually include any foods containing 0.5 grams or less per serving) are typically teeming with saturated fat, which can be just as bad for our hearts as trans fat. It’s kind of like saying “I’m not carrying a gun!” while neglecting to mention you are packing a hand grenade or a switchblade.
Genie in a Bottle
These are just the shenanigans being pulled with FDA-regulated products; when it comes to nonregulated products, like cosmetics (which are not considered drugs and thus can sidestep many of the clinical trials required by the FDA), marketers and advertisers can get away with saying just about anything. Makers of face creams, for example, are happily peddling all kinds of clever and often blatantly unproven claims. The La Prairie brand, for example (which, by the way, is sold in a jar the shape of a genie bottle to imply magical wish-granting powers), actually promises to reduce stress levels—a claim that one doctor I spoke to assured me is a medical impossibility. “Ninety-eight percent of the ‘cosmeceutical’ industry is all about marketing,” Eric Finzi, a dermatologic surgeon in Maryland, was quoted as saying. “If you buy a $1,000 cream, there’s no reason to expect it’s better than the $50 cream. It might be worse.”22
La Prairie’s Cellular Serum Platinum Rare claims to “maintain your skin’s electrical balance while warding off pollutants.” Givenchy’s Le Soin Noir contains black sea algae, which, according to the company’s ad copy, “reconstructs a catalyst in the skin to counteract the signs of aging.” Should you be so bold as to ask exactly how it does this, a Givenchy spokesperson will offer you nothing more than the assurance that the company’s clinical tests “speak for themselves.” And Lululemon, the maker of popular, overpriced yoga wear, got into hot water in 2007 when the New York Times reported that a product called VitaSea, which the company claimed contained a stress-reducing, underwater healing property known as Seacell, in fact contained no seaweed, no marine amino acids, no minerals, and no vitamins whatsoever, as the label claimed.23 Evidently, Lululemon “agreed to withdraw the claims immediately,” at least until it could prove them scientifically. The world is still waiting.24
Finally, there’s La Prairie’s Skin Caviar Crystalline Concentre, which retails for $375 an ounce and contains (I’m not kidding here) “stem cells from the rare Uttweiler Spatlauber Swiss apple, so rare that only three trees remain in existence,”25 implying some magical regenerative or restorative properties. The problem with this deranged claim is that, as Finzi explains, “Number one, no cell would stay alive in a cream. A cell is a very delicate living thing, and unless it’s in the right environment, when you take the apple off the tree, it’s starting to die. Number two, a plant’s stem cell is not going to do anything for human skin.”26
Unfortunately, the fact is that most face creams that promise to prevent aging (many of which are loaded with antioxidants for no good reason other than to give marketers an additional tagline) have next to no effect. According to one prominent British researcher quoted in the UK’s Daily Mail, “Rather than spending money on vitamin-loaded potions and pills, people who want to retain a youthful look should instead concentrate on eating healthy foods in sensible amounts and exercising.”27
And while we’re talking specious marketing claims, what about the multibillion-dollar supplement business, which has migrated well beyond chains like GNC and is now taking over aisles and aisles of most drugstores and health-food stores? Shark cartilage “may be used to help treat arthritis and cancer”; bee pollen is “a storehouse of all naturally occurring multi-vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids, hormones, and enzymes”; ginkgo biloba “may support mental sharpness”; and then there’s my personal favorite, horny goat weed, which we’re only told has a “long history of traditional use by men in China and Japan” (for what, you can draw your own conclusions). I could go on and on. And despite the fact that “these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA” and these products are “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease” (as their labels are required by law to read), we continue to buy into them; according to a 2009 survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition in Washington, DC, some 65 percent of Americans label themselves “supplement users.”
According to Dr. W. Steven Pray, Bernhardt Professor at the College of Pharmacy at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, “All this crazy junk became available thanks to the 1994 supplement health act. It’s a completely unregulated industry. . . . It just means that you or I could find a weed in our backyard and start marketing it as a dietary supplement. There have been reports of kidney stones and liver damage—no one knows what’s in this stuff.”
It’s true—the 1994 regulations (or lack of them) allow just about anyone to start up a company and roll out a supplement in record time, no medical license or credentials necessary. In general, supplement makers aren’t even under any responsibility to register their products with the FDA. As another source puts it, “The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 opened a floodgate of questionable health claims and advertising for herbal and dietary supplements. Although lawmakers didn’t intend that the supplement industry be unregulated, this has been the practical result.”28
Given how easy it is for anyone to get in on this very profitable game, it’s no surprise that the so-called nutraceuticals industry—worth $25 billion in the United States alone—continues to expand. At time of writing, though, several senators, including John McCain, are behind a new Dietary Supplement Safety Act, which would require dietary supplement manufacturers to register with the FDA and fully disclose their ingredients. Fingers crossed that it becomes law.
The High Price of Doing Good
Ever since the 2008 economic downturn, the cult of consumption in our culture has lost a lot of followers. Over the past couple of years, many of us have traded our worship of money and things for an almost fervent devotion to a “new frugality.” Forced to adjust to the new economic climate in which we suddenly found ourselves, our lives became smaller and simpler in a hurry. We stayed home, hunkered down. We quit eating out at restaurants. We sold off some of the junk collecting dust in our basements and storage lockers. We clipped coupons, shopped for bargains, made do, and wondered, sensibly, too, how on earth we’d gotten so caught up in this spending spiral in the first place. So if we’ve stopped praying at the church of the material gods, what’s standing in the wings? Answer: something no company can put a price, or even a discount sticker, on: Serenity. Simplicity. Equilibrium. Happiness. Balance. Virtue. In short, spiritual enlightenment, in its many purchasable forms.
It seems that in a world that’s increasingly hyperconnected and always “on,” today more than ever we’re searching for a simplicity in life that few of us have ever known. This “back to basics” sentiment has become so pervasive, in fact, that it has spawned a number of popular trends, from urban farming (think chicken coop on a fire escape) to “freeganism” (consuming only discarded food and goods) to “clean eating” (a strict regimen of natural eating popularized in part by best-selling author Michael Pollan).
Marketers and companies have jumped right on these trends. Which is why today so many products are marketed in a way that emphasizes Mother Earth. Their packages are plastered with words like “wellness” and “natural” and “environmentally friendly” (buzzwords that have particular meaning and significance for women, who influence roughly 80 percent of all consumer purchases).29
The irony of all this is that “green” and “ethical” and “organic” products often cost more. Hey, virtue, ch
arity, health, benevolence, and social responsibility are expensive! According to a poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, nearly half of all people, women in particular, say they are willing to pay more for “environmentally responsible” products,30 and according to that same survey, the majority of women polled believe not only that “consumers have a personal responsibility to take care of the earth” but also that “being green is good for your health and well-being.”31
Companies know this and are exploiting it in all kinds of ways. Take how Procter & Gamble’s best-selling Tide laundry detergent has begun using social responsibility as a marketing tool with its hugely successful “Loads of Hope” campaign. Evidently, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, P&G decided it would form a “Tide Loads of Hope” team to travel to Louisiana and other afflicted areas to supply clean (washed with Tide, of course) clothes to displaced residents. According to the online magazine Slate, “the team . . . arrives in a rolling Laundromat, a gigantic orange truck (the color of the original Tide box) carrying thirty-two washers and dryers.” Then, “for two or three weeks, the team, wearing bright-orange Tide T‑shirts, will wash, dry, and fold the sheets, towels, and clothes of families and aid workers for free. It’s got to be a huge relief for displaced people. It’s also likely to produce a very pleasant association the next time anyone who’s been helped sees a bottle of Tide on the grocery shelf,” the article notes.32
But is shelling out the extra money for these “responsible” products actually doing any social good? Or are they just making us feel more virtuous, in the same way that drinking acai juice makes us feel more healthy? Signs point to the latter, given that research shows that when we make these kinds of purchases we tend to give ourselves permission to make less responsible decisions in other areas of our lives—say, failing to recycle our Coke can after scarfing down an organic hamburger, or pressing the gas on our eco-friendly Priuses with an alligator-skin boot—thus undoing our efforts to “do good.” One study found that the owners of hybrid cars drive more miles, are more ticket and accident prone, and even bash into pedestrians more.33
More ironic still is that today, buying “responsible” products, like hybrid cars, is actually an act of conspicuous consumption—a way of purchasing the respect and admiration of our peers (an old episode of South Park didn’t refer to it as the “Pious” for nothing). And in fact, Toyota engineered this quite deliberately. Not only were its designers the first to make an environmentally friendly car stylish, even sexy, with its sleek design, powerful engine, and cool-looking solar-powered moonroof, its marketers made the Prius nothing short of a status symbol by taking swift advantage of our devotion to celebrity. How? The company turned to Mike Sullivan, the owner of Toyota of Hollywood, and arranged for him to transport twenty-six Priuses to the 2003 Oscars, and “before long,” BusinessWeek notes, “such stars as Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio were being photographed (‘Look, we’re so green!’) with their Priuses, and ‘It became the cool thing to do,’ says Sullivan.”34 Toyota also loaned cars to an LA public relations agency, thus ensuring snapshots of such stars as Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart in Priuses, and also provided Priuses for use on such TV shows and movies as CSI Miami, Weeds, Evan Almighty, and Superbad, where the cars ended up being featured prominently (always driven by the lead characters, no less).35 With celebrities like Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Will Ferrell, Miley Cyrus, Tim Robbins, Larry David (who owns three Priuses, including the one his character drives on his HBO series, Curb Your Enthusiasm),36 and others singing the praises of Toyota’s environmental marvel, and both the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation endorsing the Prius37 (remember the power of experts?), it’s no wonder that as of this writing, the hip brand is Toyota’s third-best-selling model, just behind the far more affordable Camry and the Corolla.38 In fact, several consumer studies today rank Toyota as one of the most environmentally friendly brands in the world. But hold on a moment—isn’t Toyota a car company?
The appeal of the Prius is a perfect example of what psychologists call “competitive altruism,” a widely accepted theory which asserts that people do socially responsible things (like buy hybrids and other environmentally friendly products) not so much to do good but rather to show off their benevolence and enhance their social reputations. One study supporting this theory found that even the most (ostensibly) environmentally conscious consumers tend to actually avoid buying green products when no one else is around to witness their selfless, mindful behavior. When people buy lightbulbs over the Internet, for example, they tend to choose the nongreen, politically incorrect (and less expensive) option. But if they’re buying in the store, where other people can see them, they will typically go with the longer-lasting LED bulb in the recycled package. As the researchers explain, “Status motives led people to make a rather economically irrational decision, at least from a superficial perspective. When people are thinking about status, they in fact want to spend more—to demonstrate not only that they are environmentally conscious, but also that they can afford to be environmentally conscious.”39
Is it any coincidence, then, that in July 2007, according to data from CNW Marketing Research, when asked why they bought a Prius, most people gave the one answer that every marketer loves to hear? The main reason for buying a Prius, said 57 percent of owners, was because “it makes a statement about me.”40
The Church of Persuasion
I guess it should come as no surprise, given the turbulence of these times and the return to basics that it has inspired in many of us, that spiritual marketing—the term for trying to pass off products as having soothing, magical, or summoning qualities—has become a popular strategy for all kinds of unlikely brands and products, ranging from candy to sports drinks to even cars and computers.
Today, those seeking “a taste of nirvana” can munch Hampton Chutney or suck on “Classy Yoga Candy” or “Karma Candy.” And if this leaves you thirsty, Anheuser-Busch recently rolled out a series of ads featuring parched Tibetan lamas gazing longingly at a blimp labeled “Budweiser.” Still, when it comes to spiritual marketing, few edible products can compete with the invention of one Gao Xianzhang, a Chinese farmer who has actually come up with a way to grow Buddha-shaped pears. Sure, they cost about $7.50 apiece, but that hasn’t stopped this ingenious farmer from selling close to ten thousand of them.
A commercial for the 2010 Hyundai Sonata features a “suggested daily routine for achieving inner peace” (essentially just a handful of yoga poses including one cleverly christened “the Sonata”),41 while in one spot for Gatorade, basketball legend Michael Jordan hikes up a rocky mountain (Himalayan, no doubt) in search of a spiritual guru whose sage wisdom turns out to be the brand’s slogan, “Life’s a sport. . . . Drink it up.” And the computer maker IBM and Web search engine Lycos have both built advertising campaigns around Sherpas and Tibetan holy men.42
Sometimes holy people even participate in this brandwashing. For example, a rustic Cistercian abbey in the Midwest has a for-profit arm called LaserMonks.com. When not praying or fasting, these monks—yes, actual monks—will refill your used printer cartridges. The monks claim that they have served more than fifty thousand customers to date and that they process anywhere from two hundred to three hundred daily orders. Their 2005 sales? $2.5 million.43 (Oh, and the Web site also indulges Internet prayer requests.)44 And one Los Angeles company, known as Intentional Chocolate, goes so far as to employ a recording device that captures the electromagnetic brain waves of real-life meditating Tibetan monks before “exposing” the recording to the chocolates in the assembly lines for five days per batch. According to company founder Jim Walsh, “Whoever consumes this chocolate will manifest optimal health and functioning at physical, emotional and mental levels and in particular will enjoy an increased sense of energy, vigor and well-being for the benefit of all beings.”45
If New Age spirituality has rea
lly become the new consumer religion, is it any wonder that there is a moisturizer called Hydra Zen or that a campaign for the beauty company ghd, which refers to itself as “a new religion for hair,” explains how users can live their lives according to the “gospel of ghd”? Or that the logo for Brazil’s Sagatiba, a popular sugarcane-based liquor, is Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer? Similarly, Guerlain, the upscale Parisian perfumer, distributes a fragrance known as Samsara, which is named after the Buddhist cycle of birth and rebirth and whose ad copy reads, “Samsara is the symbol of harmony, of osmosis between a woman and her perfume” (the perfume stopper even resembles the eye of Buddha).
The reason all this works so well? Well, remember that our brains are predisposed to believe in something—anything. You might say that as humans we need to believe. Which is why companies are constantly coming up with new and ingenious ways to capitalize not just on New Agey spirituality but also on traditional, old-world faith and religion. To give one rather surprising example, I’ve noticed that in recent years the increasing number of modern-leaning Muslims in our society have presented companies with an unexpected yet very lucrative opportunity. A little background: If you’re a devout Muslim, your religion dictates that you can only eat foods designated “halal,” which is an Arabic term defined as “lawful” or “permitted” (among other things, this excludes pork and its by-products, animals not properly slaughtered, carnivorous animals, and alcohol). Now, historically, buying halal food meant going to a Muslim grocer or butcher, who cut the meat in accordance with Islamic principles.46 Such a person might not be hard to find in downtown Baghdad, but here in the States, there aren’t exactly Muslim butchers on every corner. Which is why food companies have begun to offer thousands of new products boasting the halal label. This business, according to the Halal Journal, is worth roughly $632 billion per year—a staggering 16 percent of the global food industry.47