Advertisements are not written with the engineer in mind. I know this. Marketing – particularly the marketing of personal care products – is aimed at people who care about image. Ads are for people who will buy something not based on what they think of the product, but based on what they think other people think of a product. They are for people who can be hooked by clever slogans, soothing words, nice images, and who recoil at the cruel, hard world of numbers and quantifiable properties. You know, normal people.
If someone is selling perfume, they don’t bother telling you it smells good. They show you people who they hope you will envy or desire to emulate, and then imply that they use the given perfume. Engineers are all but immune to this sort of thing because a) Who cares what that moody idiot uses? and b) Why should I expect the same results? Plus: c) while we’re at it, just what sort of results are we talking about here? How does this increase my chances of mating with another person as compared to smelling like regular B.O.? How much will this improve my odds? How were those numbers obtained, and what was the error margin of the study?
No, marketing to engineers and mathematicians is mostly a waste of time. Better to aim your salesmanship at their friends, spouses, and coworkers and hope your product is purchased as a gift on their behalf. Given the way engineers tend to smell, this is actually a pretty safe bet.
I know all of this, but I still get incredulous when I read the idiotic things I see on packaging. I get irritated and defensive, as if someone wrote them for me. What do you mean? Do you actually expect me to believe this stuff? You think I’m an idiot or something?
Case in point:
Suave hair goop. Haircare has now advanced so far that you need a PHD in Molecular Biology just to get your hair wet. Shampoo, PH-balancing conditioner, oily / dry correctional post-conditioner rinse, super-hold gel, and let us not forget that towering nemesis of the ozone layer, hairspray. (And let us not speak of the complex chemistry set they sell you if you plan on changing your hair color!) Whatever this is, the back of the bottle has this to teach me:
Translation: This product does X, and costs less than products which cost more. Of course it costs less than more expensive brands. It would be impossible for it to be otherwise! It reminds me of this old post from Steven: A blurb which sounds nice but contains no information.
But I suppose that’s better than simple nonsense:
Seems harmless enough. But when we look closer:
What exactly is “family protection”, and how would it differ from the other forms of protection offered by other types of band-aids? Are these designed to be worn by more than one person at a time?
And my favorite sort of blurb: The herbal paradise utopian new-age eco-spiritual sales pitch:
This one paragraph is a deep, bountiful source of untapped insanity. This reads less like a sales pitch for shampoo and more like an invitation to join a cult. Fully deconstructing this and holding each bit of sophistry up to the cold light of reason would take ten pages, but my favorite bit is this: “will take your hair to a place it’s never been before”. So, I guess it’s like the U.S.S. Enterprise of shampoo? Scotty! Three to beam down, plus my hair!
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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