Misleading Advertising

One thing that angers me, is false or misleading advertising. Although extreme cases may be rare, milder forms are present in everyday products. It seems to me that the most prominent examples lie in the food industry.
Have you been to the frozen food isle in a grocery store and picked up a frozen meal, and savoured at the delicious image that was in front of you and Only to bring it back home in excitement and discover quite the opposite?  Or gone to a fast food joint for  delicious meal as shown on TV, but was greeted with a greasy mess? All this happens too often…

Left side: KFC's depiction Right side: reality

I understand that this plagues cheap and low quality food products, but it seems unethical to present it in whatever unrealistic form on advertisements. Consumers are highly influenced by the image of food, and it companies take full advantage of it.

Another form of misleading advertisement could be not just in the unrealistic portrayal of the product, but actually false information. This seems more rare, but we have all experienced it. A recent example would be the amazing ‘free new biscuits’

Look at the size of that fine print. Well done McDonalds.

McDonalds was offering… with the massive amount of publicity and promotion, everyone knew about it. But what few people actually knew was, the very limited supply, and locations that they offered it at. For example at UBC, their McDonalds was not ‘equipped to handle these simple biscuits’, and didn’t offer them to a hungry mob of students. Sure, they mentioned, “only at select locations” on their posters, but then again, who can read the fine print the size of a hair? Additionally, at that location, they didn’t bother mentioning it until you were at the counter in the middle of ordering.

I strongly believe that marketing should be conducted in an ethical manner, such misleading or false advertising really puts a negative image on the company.