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.
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.
Putting some holes in a cardboard box for a Pet Rock to breathe was one of the most inspired advertising ploys ever. Freaking brilliant.
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.
Halitosis was basically invented by Listerine. Not to say bad breath didn’t exist. But it was just bad breath.
The slogan ‘More Doctors Smoke Camels’, implying that Camel cigarettes were some sort of ‘healthy’ cigarette recommended by doctors.
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.
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.
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.
That oranges are loaded with Vitamin C. There’s more Vitamin C in a bell pepper than in an orange.
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.
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.
Razor companies ran ad campaigns to get the public to see women’s leg and underarm hair as unhygenic and gross so they could sell razors to women, too.
Now it’s so deeply ingrained in our culture I cannot imagine it ever having been normal for women to have leg hair.
Dockers invented *Business Casual* to sell more khaki slacks and help get men out of wearing suits to work as much.
Literally any company that claims De-Toxifying properties. What toxins!?
It’s probably an urban legend, as I can’t find a source for it online, but I remember reading about a company that sold canned tuna advertising its product as being “guaranteed not to turn black in the can!” Of course, tuna would never turn black in the can, but by saying it won’t, it implied that competing brands _did_ sell tuna that turned black in the can.
Well I wouldn’t quite call it a myth, but Tang (a company that sold fruit flavored drinks) is responsible for the mispronunciation of the word orangutan thanks to them using an orangutan as their mascot. Now many people incorrectly pronounce it as orangu-tang, which I guess counts as free product placement for them.
Big Milk hyperbolised the amount of dairy that people need for the Food Pyramid to sell more dairy.
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.
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.
My grandpa used to tell me the story of how he was friends with the guy who created the beverage “Talking Rain”. The sparkling water became very popular in the 90’s and came in a bottle with the story of how the native people of the area found a bubbling spring that seemed to talk as rain fell into it or something. This magical water became the source for Talking Rain. But that was all of course just a lie the guy made up to sell carbonated tap water to idiots.
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.
The colorful flowers in your yard are actually terrible weeds. Spray toxic chemicals on your property weekly!
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.
Ooh! I just read about this in a book a couple months ago. The man who invented tooth paste deliberately put in mint and other flavors along with a chemical that causes your gums to tingle so that when you wake up in the morning you crave the mint & the tingling feeling on your gums. That is why you’re mouth feels atrocious if you do not brush every morning. Not a myth per se, but they sold a product that perpetuated itself forward as people used it more and more.
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.
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.
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.
That watching TV without a light on will hurt your eyes. Very much made by GE because they were worried people would buy fewer light bulbs…
KerryGold butter originally was just a standard butter that happened to be made in Ireland. They released a marketing campaign about how you shouldn’t cook with KerryGold because it was a fancier high quality butter. It ended up working and international sales skyrocketed. So they used the money to actually improve their product so that it would be as it is today a fancier high quality butter.
Montgomery Ward commissioned the story of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer to make the coloring books they were giving away cheaper.
Subway convinced everyone that eating a whole loaf of bread in 1 sitting is healthy.
Drinking Orange Juice is part of a well balanced breakfast. Nope. It’s just a bunch of sugar.
Dark colored diamonds were once gems that were basically thrown away by mining companies. They were not as shiny and enticing to customers as the light colored diamonds.
At some point a company came up with the idea to rebrand these cheap, crappy diamonds as something desirable. Suddenly these muddy “chocolate” diamonds were born and they have since grown into a huge hit. Jewelry companies now make a ton of money from once worthless diamonds.
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.
I think I heard many companies such as Baron’s that sell test prep exam make it so standardized testing is common in the US and necessary.
Highly expensive short digital cables such as HDMI will make your music sound better. It’s literally just 1s and 0s being transmitted so if there is a loss of data transmission in audio you will get a drop out – you cannot hear the difference between a $5 and $200 HDMI cable.
Long cables on the other hand do need to be high quality or else they will break more easily, especially in the AV industry where cables are being connected and disconnected multiple times a day, although a lot of companies now use fibre or HDSDI for cabling. You don’t need a $200+ 1m HDMI cable, a $5 HDMI cable will do the trick if it’s being plugged in once and left.
In general a lot of the audiophile industry is build on myths, especially the example I mentioned above. Amps, speakers, processors etc are not a myth as quality products will last longer and sound better, but a lot of it is to sell you more expensive products.
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.
Jiffy-Lube. Decided that everyone needs to change their oil every 3,000 miles or your vehicle would explode.
Pringles’ “Once you pop, you can’t stop” ad campaign has convinced countless people that they are apparently justifiably helpless to not eat an entire can in one sitting.
That global warming is not real – because regulations hurt the bottom line of coal and oil industry.
GMOs being bad for you. Not only is it ridiculous, marketers take advantage of it all the time. I see poorly labeled non gmo foods everywhere. Buying non GMO strawberries? Yes you are, since gmo strawberries don’t exist. There are only 10 gmo plants out there and squash, soybeans, corn, papaya, sugar beets, canola, potatoes, and Apples are the only ones you’ll run into at the food store. Not that there harmful in anyway, they just involve scary science made up by people who think the earth is round!
Do carrots count as a product not from a company? The whole eyesight thing during WWII to present day.
The one that “Chewing gum is good for your teeth”. I’m looking at you, Trident.
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