99.9% of
advertising messages are meaningless
By MUNGAI KIHANYA
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
24 February 2008
Advertisements have
been known to make claims that are factually incorrect – remember the
“energy drink” that claimed to contain “the highest content of vitamin
C” yet a laboratory test by a school girl did not find the nutrient?
Others can be inconsistent, for example, there is a motor vehicle ad on
radio that claims that “the car in front is always a T” But, when you
think about that statement, it also implies that the car
behind is also always a T!
Some claims are
totally ludicrous: I am told that in
Currently, there are
three adverts in the media promoting different medicated bath soaps. The
first claims that it “kills 10 times more germs than other soaps”; the
second one says it “kills 99.9 percent of all germs”; and the last one
claims to “kill 100 percent more germs than ordinary soaps”. The
question, then, is: which of these soaps is better than the others?
Unfortunately, it is
not easy to compare these claims at face value. But clearly, the
advertisers seem to be trying to outdo each other as who can quote a
larger figure – 10, then 99.9, and finally 100!
The first and last
statements can be compared (“10 times more” versus “100 percent more”),
but to do that, we must first assume that the phrases “other soaps” and
“ordinary soaps” mean the same thing.
Now suppose that the
“ordinary soaps” can clean, say 1,000 germs. Then the first medicated
soap is claiming that it can kill 10,000 (10 times 1,000) and the second
is saying that it exterminate only 2,000 (1,000 plus 100 percent).
Thus, even though the number “10”
is smaller than “100”, the first soap stills cleans better than the last
one. However, if the term “other soaps” does not mean the same thing as
“ordinary soap”, then this comparison is completely invalid.
The second claim of
killing 99.9 percent of germs is quit different from the other two in
that the soap does not compare itself to any other. Still, it is not
clear whether it is claiming to kill 99.9 percent of the number or 99.9
percent of the types of germs found on the skin. But I guess most people
would assume the former meaning, so I will stick with that.
Suppose there are,
say, one million germs on the skin. Then this second soap is claiming
that it can kill 999,000 of them. Now this might seem to imply that it
is the best of the three. But, from the available information, we have
no way of knowing.
So what’s the moral
of the story? 99.9 percent of advertising messages are just
meaningless gobbledygook!
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