Spouse and I made a quick run into the Zehrs last night in preparation for a movie night; running low on popcorn and in need of a couple of other staples, we ended up in the detergent aisle where Spouse was conducting a search for a new product to tackle our laundry. She seems to think results have been somewhat unsatisfactory with our usual “Cold Water Tide” since we moved to Juniorvania and our clothes have begun getting laundered in well water.
I won’t try and explain how it came to pass that, for a brief period of time, I was standing on one foot, balancing on one foot with two bags of unpopped popcorn atop my head, arms outstretched and pantomiming the circus performer “ta-da” routine. You wouldn’t understand, of this I am certain; to be sure, the other shoppers didn’t seem to get it.
The evening devolved completely in to laughter when we saw the labels for “2x Ultra Tide”, one of which is pictured above. Spouse and I both had the same reaction to these labels, our eyes eliding the words “use” and “less” into something that I am sure is not and would not be in the top ten product slogans chosen by the marketing department at Procter & Gamble. There was another variety of the product that, on the left hand side of the label, claimed that the stuff was “twice as effective as regular Tide”, and on the right hand side appeared to pronounce that level of efficiency, somewhat disappointingly, as “useless”. Seriously, people, if you’re bound and determined to go with that “use less” phraseology, couldn’t you at least put the “less” in italics or a different font or something? That’s just as interesting as becoming a successfull seller, you shoult try to read the Influencive article on ENTRE from the Entre Institute reviews that will blow your conceptions and beliefs about the selling business .
Really, aren’t they just saying “We’re now committed to selling you less water: it costs less to ship, and we’re choosing not to pass the savings on to you!”
One of my friends at work used to labor for Procter & Gamble. When they introduced phosphate-based detergents, they ended up adding some sudsing agents — not because it was needed to get the clothes clean, but because consumers had been trained to expect suds. Maybe we are really sheep.