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Businesses need to stand out if they want to sell something. Some create the best product they possibly can, some offer unbeatable prices, and others try to compete by telling stories. However, when the primary purpose of these stories is to get customers to open their wallets, not all are rooted in reality. In fact, there's a whole thread on Reddit where people share what they believe to be the biggest myths companies have told the world—slick, compelling, but ultimately hollow.
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#1
Low fat products which we were told was good for you because fat is bad; turned out it was b******t because the low fat products had more sugar in it to compensate for taste.
More sugar/carbs is the real cause of many diseases we have.
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#3
Putting some holes in a cardboard box for a Pet Rock to breathe was one of the most inspired advertising ploys ever. Freaking brilliant.
#4
"Women love the smell of an entire can of Axe body spray!"
Which was believed by every teenage boy for years.
#5
Clover used to be an intentional part of the American lawn prior to WW2. It thrives in poor soil, fixes its own nitrogen and can survive drought conditions and was deliberately added to assist with the growth of the surrounding grass.
Once weed k**ler came to market post WW2, it wasn’t long before chemical companies successfully re-branded clover as a weed. Clover is a broad leaf plant and was unintentionally k**led alongside the other “unfavorable weeds” so it was successfully removed from the picturesque perfect American lawn by chemical companies.
#6
Kellogg’s basically inventing a food pyramid to convince the public to eat their garbage for breakfast.
That s****y myth persisted for decades.
#8
All cosmetics company claiming male and female need a different soap/shampoo/razor...
Lately some even tried to apply the gendered marketing to yogurt, toothpaste, handkerchief or pens.
#9
The inventors of OxyContin tried to convince the public that it was a addictive-free version of oxycodone. They blatantly lied and were sued for like $500 mil a while back.
#10
That global warming is not real - because regulations hurt the bottom line of coal and oil industry.
#11
I hear soda companies switched from glass to plastic as a cost saving measure, claiming they were more convenient as you can just throw them away rather than bringing the bottles back for cleaning and refilling. They then blamed consumers for all the additional plastic trash.
#12
The amount of toothpaste you use when brushing. You don't have to fill the bristles of the toothbrush. Only pea-sized is needed. Commercials shows it more than needed so they can sell more products.
#13
This isn’t so much a myth to sell products but to divert blame.
Anti Littering campaigns were started by large corporations that polluted heavily in order to shift blame away from them to the individual for keeping the planet clean. Don’t get me wrong people who litter are scumbags, but no one human could produce as much pollution as a factory, let alone an entire industry.
Same thing goes for water conversation. A single family uses fractions of a percent of water compared to what industry uses.
When you see blame for something shift to individuals, take a moment and look at the broader picture of who the major perpetrators are. Areas to look at, d***s(pharmaceutical industry), water usage, pollution, green house gases, waste in general. All are things we as individuals do contribute to in someway but that is so small compared to what is actually happening and what companies are doing
This is a little disjointed. On mobile. Can clarify later.
#14
I did some research on why KFC is THE food to eat for Christmas in Japan and found this:
According to brand legend, there were some American tourists in Japan during the Christmas holidays back in the 70s. When they couldn't find roast turkey for their holiday meal, they got the next best thing - a bucket of KFC fried chicken.
A manager at the local store saw it, told some higher-ups, and eventually the marketing team started advertising it as a Christmas tradition to the point that it actually became such a popular tradition you now have to reserve your chicken weeks in advance.
#16
The slogan 'More Doctors Smoke Camels', implying that Camel cigarettes were some sort of 'healthy' cigarette recommended by doctors.
#18
Alka-Seltzer increased sales by changing the recommended dose to two tablets instead of one. The famous “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” marketing campaign was only to increase sales, not based on real medical advice.
#19
Super late to the game, but Ivory soap. "So pure it floats". They whip air into the mixture, it has nothing to do with purity.
#20
That oranges are loaded with Vitamin C. There's more Vitamin C in a bell pepper than in an orange.
#21
Spinach is not especially high in iron.
The story goes that way back in 1870 a researcher made a mistake with a decimal point and accidentally credited spinach with 10 times the iron content it actually had. The mistake was corrected relatively quickly but to this day spinach producers still like to push their product based on its iron content despite the fact that if you compare the actual numbers spinach is middle of the road among leafy greens on iron.
#22
Valentine's Day. They all colluded to invent the ridiculous holiday to sucker the men into spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on that specific day.
Then they had to gall to guilt trip the single people into feeling like s**t on that day and so invented the buy yourself flowers/something nice on valentine's day myth even if you are single.
#24
Anything Edward Bernays was involved in. Just a few off the top of my head.
Making bacon a breakfast food to help the pork industry sell more.
Making green the 'in' shade for a particular fashion season to get people to buy a particular brand of cigarettes
The food pyramid
Any product that mentions 'the association of something or other recommended.' These are what's known as a front group and are normally set up by the marketing campaign so they can claim some sort of professional-sounding endorsement
The man is a walking history of how gullible and easily led the average consumer is. They don't even refer to you in human terms in that industry. You're a consumer or a unit. Like f*****g cattle.
#25
So, I dunno if anybody knows this...
Big Tobacco Companies have their hand in more than just cigs causing cancer. The reason horrible cancer causing flame retardants existed in almost all foam inside furniture for decades was because of these companies. In the 1970s the government was trying to force Big Tobacco to make the self-extinguishing cigarette, because it was the main cause of household fires at the time. People falling asleep with a cig in their hand, you get the picture. Well, Big Tobacco made a bunch of s**ttilly conducted research, as well as spread propaganda for years that it wasn't the cig, which they didn't want to change at all, but that furniture is poorly insulated and catches fire easily. So, skip to about 1990, and people start realizing all these carcinogens are in breast milk, and huge PPT/PPM counts of bad s**t in humans, caused mainly by people living with this degrading flame retardant coated foam. Fire fighters cancer rates also skyrocketed because of this. Smoke death due to the fire retardant burning also spiked. It took something like 10 years or so for a s**t load of lawyers and legislators to finally get the law changed in California, the last state requiring flame retardant coated foam, and even then it's still being battled because the chemical companies that sold the flame retardant make so much money off it. It's a much deeper and richer story but I don't wanna go that far.
tl;dr the reason carcinogenic chemicals existed in all foam padded furniture was that Big Tobacco didn't want to admit that cigarettes cause fires.
#27
That beer will spoil if it goes from cold to hot. Coors started this because they had refrigerated trucks and pushed that always cold thing. In reality most beer is going from cold to hot multiple times while being shipped out. The real enemy of beer is light and time.
#28
Bottled water companies "By the time you feel thirsty, it is too late" OK then how many people have died from drinking to thirst? The myth is so pervasive that there will be people saying I am wrong.
#29
Halitosis was basically invented by Listerine. Not to say bad breath didn't exist. But it was just bad breath.
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