Actually, not just them but dodgy 'percentage' advertising in general. You know, the kind that has lines like '90% of all housewives prefer Pat Sharpes Deluxe Mullet Wipes' as part of the ad. Because they're simply lies.

The kelloggs one springs to mind, though, hence the title. Children are 9% more attentive at school if they eat cereal like kelloggs for breakfast. Sounds good, yeah? Then you read the small print; firstly, it's eating kelloggs to not eating any breakfast. I.e. children work better if they're not starving. Shocking, eh?

And how do they get this marvellous 9% figure? Parental evaluation. Even worse, the 'no brekky' group is half the size of the Kelloggs group; so any percentage difference can be rounded up nicely. Me, I'm surprised it's only 9%; I'd be pretty f#####g narky if my parents held back my breakfast when I was at school. Of course, it's an arbitrary number measuring an arbitrary quantity based on a placebo effect anyways.

Or the hair/skincare cream with xx% of women noticing an improvement. Well, if you give someone a shitload of free skincare, and then ask them a week later if it helped, what do you expect? 'Thanks for the generosity, but I've not noticed any difference. What, no more?'

Or the insurance adverts that compare their prices to precisely one (unnamed) competitor; probably Fat Bobs Cumbernauld Insurance or some nobody company insuring gangsters.

So why the hell isn't this false advertising? We (in the UK) don't allow the same sort of lies about effectiveness and competitors they do (IIRC) in, say, the US, so why is this allowed? It gets on my tits.

I've been studying a little bit in design and marketing too so they are training us on what shapes and colours etc to use.
I was paranoid before, now I just know that everyone is out to get you. They spend millions of dollars just to find which shape would make you purchase their product.

Some Canadian bloke is paranoid delusional and goes to the extreme of wearing sunglasses that change the colour of everything. Thus wasting millions of dollars of research.

I hate the 99% fat free bullshit. Its all lies for one, and fat people still eat too much carbohydrates and don't exercise so it means s###.

Everything is about selling the product. Thus people are often uneducated about the things they purchase.

I'm very afraid for Australia at the moment, people are becoming much more influenced by tv. (the news and media over here is bullshit, all f#####g propaganda towards one party or the other [mind not as bad as american tv])
People are becoming more materialistic these days. Tis just dissapointing...

I aim to one day promote Australian culture again, hopefully we can strengthen against the invasion of M-f#####g-TV.

I could point a finger but I wont.

That bowl of cereal I just ate has really helped me, by a grand total of nought f#####g percent. Cheers Kelloggs.

I wouldn't mind some of those Mullet Wipes.