From questionable McRibs to Quaker fibs: the power of brand name bullshittery

Fries with that?

The plaintiffs argue that by including the word “Rib” in the name, McDonald’s engages in “a deliberate sleight of hand” that misleads reasonable consumers into expecting rib meat, which commands a premium price. McDonald’s has responded by calling the lawsuit a distortion and noting that its website has always described the product as “seasoned boneless pork.”

The case is pending, but this sort of brand-name bullshittery is as old as marketing itself. McDonald’s isn’t the only brand that could come under scrutiny. 

Not only is the McRib not made from pork ribs. Quaker Oats has never had any link to Quakers. Dr Pepper wasn’t invented by a doctor. Our marketing ancestors got away with all this bullshit all the time, but then the internet arrived, and things got more tasty.

Like when Australian teenager Matt Corby purchased a Subway Footlong sandwich in 2013, only to discover he was an inch short of its titular promise. His ancestors would have just sworn a bit and moved on. But he uploaded the photographic evidence to Facebook with a throwaway post.

And it went viral. 

Dozens of other customers started posting pictures of their own stunted Subway purchases. That immediately sparked the venal interest of America’s class-action lawyers, who will essentially sue anyone, at any time, over anything, if there is even a tiny chance of a payout. They may sue me for that last sentence. [Editor’s note: Sue us, thanks Mark]. 

Within a week of Corby’s innocuous three-word post, nine separate suits had been filed in American courts, all aimed at US consumer protection laws that prohibit deceptive business practices.

Cutting a long story very short, the cases floundered on a single shock revelation: the majority of Subway’s Footlong sandwiches were indeed a foot long. The vagaries of baking and packing did result in an occasional loss of inches, but only in very rare circumstances. 

We’ve all been there. Right?

Even then, the initial amount of bread baked was always the same and the cases were thrown out. In a rare moment of marketing authenticity, Subway’s Footlong was, mostly, a foot long.

Things were a lot more opaque with Vitamin Water, Coca-Cola’s masterstroke of brand-name bullshittery. Consumer advocacy groups sued in 2009, alleging that the product’s name, combined with health claims about reducing eye disease and boosting immune function, misled consumers into believing they were purchasing something healthy rather than, as the plaintiffs memorably characterized it, “just another flavored, sugary snack food like Coca-Cola, except that defendants chose not to carbonate it”. 

Ouch.

Coca-Cola’s legal defense included the genuinely astonishing argument that no reasonable consumer could be misled into thinking Vitamin Water was healthy. The judge was unimpressed, noting that expecting consumers to ignore the front of the bottle and hunt through the small-print nutritional facts posted on the back to discover the product contains 32 grams of sugar was optimistic, at best.

The litigation dragged on for years until Coca-Cola agreed to add the words “with sweeteners” to labels and delete most of its health claims. This was a win for Coca-Cola, which got to maintain its billion-dollar brand, and a win for attorneys, who collected $2.73m for their efforts. The only losers were consumers, who were left to once again assume they are making a healthy choice with Vitamin Water despite consuming enough sugar to power a series of small children’s birthday parties.

The most ironic example of brand name bullshittery is the fascinating case of Poundland. Founded in 1990 on its titular value message, the company rapidly fell foul of inflation, simple economics and the intrinsic requirement of any business to turn a profit. It simply could not keep selling everything for a pound. So it gradually stopped. Today, less than a third of its inventory qualifies. The irony? The chain was in so much trouble last year that it was sold to Gordon Brothers for the nominal sum of, you guessed it, a pound.

At least names like Poundland or Footlong are partially, tangentially appropriate. Many examples of brand name bullshittery are more extreme and the contradiction between name, claim and game far more fallacious. Kentucky Fried Chicken isn’t based in Kentucky. White chocolate has no chocolate in it. Panama hats have always been made in Ecuador. And the cereal brand Grape-Nuts contains no grapes.

Or nuts.

What is it made from? Nobody knows.

But the grand exemplar of brand-name bullshittery, the biggest, boldest turd of them all, is definitely Häagen-Dazs. Its origin story is breathtakingly bogus.

Faced with a price war in the US ice-cream market in 1959, Reuben Mattus, the founder of Senator Frozen Products, decided to go upmarket. Convinced he needed something that sounded exotic and imported for his new brand, he opted for a Danish name.

In one of the great moments of marketing, and certainly brand-name bullshittery, Mattus sat on his couch in the Bronx and, to use the correct technical terminology, made a bunch of shit up. He knew no Danes, had never been to Denmark, and it shows. Häagen-Dazs has an umlaut and a zs digraph at the end despite neither being a feature of the Danish language. To this day, Danish people don’t buy Häagen-Dazs because they literally don’t understand what the fuck it is.

Flagrant, ridiculous, flamboyant bullshittery. And yet it worked so well that Häagen-Dazs continues not only to be commercially successful, but one of the great brands of modern marketing. Brilliant positioning. Fantastic execution. Buckets of brand equity. Premium pricing.

Maybe that’s the ultimate lesson of brand-name bullshittery. Marketers focus on benefits, not features. And perhaps that also applies, in extremis, to naming. You can choose a more truthful, valid brand name: the Eleven-Incher, Less Than Five Pound Land, a McTripe sandwich. But where is the fun, or fame, or benefit in any of that?

Better to go wide and long and revel in ambiguity and outright deception. Ignore the constraints of accuracy. Brand name bullshittery beats authenticity and accuracy, by at least an inch, every time.

Mark Ritson is a former marketing professor, brand consultant and award-winning columnist. He is also the founder of the MiniMBA, which is neither mini, it lasts for twelve weeks, nor an MBA, it just focuses on the marketing part. But it’s amazing and kicks off again in April: www.minimba.com

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