Out Loud: Fat Attack

September 14, 2006

I was listening to a friend with amusement recently as she told me about this new and improved weight loss programme she's seen on television.

"I tell you my friend, it works!" she said, going on and on about how another friend of hers was on it and has as a result lost five kilograms in a month.

As someone who has walked this path before in my late teens and early 20s - where I swallowed almost every pill that entered the market promising me a "new me" in just 30 days - hundreds of rands later and a few kilograms heavier, I think I can safely regard myself as an expert on diet products.

"And you know what, you get to eat whatever you want and don't even need to exercise. It's like losing all the weight with none of the sweat," she continued.

That's when I knew I had to step in, and knock some sense into her. How can an intelligent woman like her believe such nonsense? But that's what the ad said, she insisted.

Talk about one man's dilemma being another's fertile ground to make serious cash.

But isn't it what marketing and advertising is all about, convincing people that you're offering them a solution to their problems while not telling them the entire truth, such as that it's not the weight loss product that makes you lose weight but the very strict calorie-controlled diet that does the trick?

I was laughing with a colleague at how users of diet products always looked so dramatically different in their "After" pictures - no more pale skins but tanned, toned bodies, some with physiques that don't match their faces. She confirmed something I've suspected for a long time but thought it couldn't be. Advertisers have a conscience, I thought, they wouldn't blatantly lie to the consumers like that.

"They use body doubles in those ads, didn't you know?" she said. She relayed an encounter she had with a woman who told her that that's what she did for a living - she's a body double for those "After" pictures. Yes, those pictures that are a source of inspiration and torture for thousands of gullible young girls and women.

But is such behaviour only prevalent among advertisers and marketers or is it just human nature?

I suspect it's just the latter. You see it everywhere. The boom in the home security industry is another example. The high crime statistics have led to a booming industry where people are promised security and safety at their homes. at a price of course.

Never mind that every body knows the criminals are always a step ahead of the authorities.

The same with pyramid schemes. People continue to fall for these regardless of continuous warnings that if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Why people don't have the same mentality towards diet products, it's beyond me.
I suppose they deserve to be exploited by advertisers.

Source: http://www.marketingweb.co.za/marketing/170401.htm