Guaranteed Not to Turn Pink in the Can
As the story goes, a Pacific cannery with a surplus of white salmon and facing a public accustomed to seeing only pink salmon, began printing their labels with the prominent words, “Guaranteed not to turn pink in the can.” According to the legend, they took over the market.
Snopes is unable to determine whether the story is true or not. No matter, the lesson is valid.
A similar story is told of Australian government officials trying to discourage cannibalism in parts of the former New Guinea protectorate. To do so, they shipped in tons of canned beef, the labels of which meant little to the illiterate islanders, except for a picture of a cow. The stuff wasn’t popular. However, the next shipment of the same product had a picture of the president of the canning company, and the locals couldn’t get enough of it.
Again, true or not, the story teaches us much about perception trumping reality in advertising. While treading perilously close to the line, such marketing doesn’t actually tell an untruth. It just tells the truth in a deceptive fashion (the canned beef people probably not deliberately).
Your cupboards likely contain all kinds of boxes and cans boasting “no sodium” when in fact the real problem is not sodium, but that the thing contains enough calories to nourish a small army. Similarly, many “blue products” boast “half of the saturated fat” when the original had no perceptible traces of any kind of fat in the first place.
Hinky advertising of that nature may be OK in a hyper-competitive world such as food sales, but it doesn’t have a place in professional services. As professionals, we can’t and shouldn’t allow our public perception to be tainted by sharp practice and cute language, whether in advertising or in service delivery. Our reputations are too precious and too fragile.