Marketing Mania

I’ll admit it.  I am a sucker for marketing ploys.  Just the other day at the grocery store I bought “Smart Wheat” bread.  What’s so smart about it….did it graduate magna cum laude from the dough factory?  Yet somehow my hand absentmindedly plucked it from the shelf of no less than two dozen other types of bread.  It wasn’t the cheapest one and it most likely was not the healthiest option but I was in a hurry and fell “hook, line, and sinker” for the loaf that had to be the intelligent choice, right? 

 Towards the back of the store I opened the refrigerated case to select an orange juice and once again was fooled by the “Kids” orange juice.  Hey, I needed orange juice and I had kids so this had to be the one for me right???  I mean what could be wrong with a carton that contains Vitamins A-E and has an orange with a smiley face on it? 

These marketing geniuses don’t just get ya at the supermarket either.  When my son was born over 4 years ago BPA (Bisphenol A:  a compound used to make some plastics that the latest research claims may cause neurologic damage if ingested) was an abbreviation that was not familiar to me but now……you might as well put a picture of a skull and crossbones on anything that has even come into contact with BPA.  Here is a picture of a bib boasting that it is BPA-free that I would be tempted to buy even though the chance of my child actually eating the bib is an impossibility.  Marketing. 

You know who could learn from these marketing strategies?  Car mechanics.  I had my oil changed last month and the mechanic began his usual recommendations for the 60,000 mile check-up that included changing the rear differential fluid for the low, low cost of $106.90.  “No thank you!” I said easily.  Now, if they had called it “Limit your chances of getting in an accident and harming your kids” fluid I may have considered it!