Advertisers

In shock news last week, it emerged that those bastions of truth, totally robust statistical analysis and not-at-all-made-up science, L'Oreal, have had their knuckles rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority, over their Telescopic Mascara adverts.

Turns out their claims that the mascara makes lashes 60% longer failed to make it clear that this referred to an increase in the 'appearance' of lash length, rather than an actual extension.

Better still the adverts featured Penelope Cruz sporting some spectactular lashes; turns out however, that the lashes were only 'her own' in the manner that Dolly Parton claims ownership of her hair i.e. she paid for it (though actually I'm guessing Ms Cruz's probably came courtesy of the make-up artist).

The ASA have quite rightly ruled that the advert misled when it failed to mention that Cruz was wearing some individual false lashes.

L'Oreal counter claim that it is "common industry practice" to use artificial lashes.

Which just goes to show that it's possible to wallow for so long in the murky, depths of mis-speak and deception that your moral compass becomes water logged and defunct and your sense of normal, seriously warped.

I've heard a whisper about a new product that allegedly the 'scientists' at L'Oreal will be launching soon. It's called Bolluxium - it's like botux, but claims to be so good that it can take skin which is wrinkled as any old nut sack and transform it into taut, silky smoothness. Errr sorry that's 'seem' taut, silky and smooth when viewed from a distance of 200 yards (oh and some false skin and polyfila was used on the model...).

Still they're not the only ones at it; perhaps the L'Oreal CEO plays golf with their counterpart from Lexus, whose adverts for its RX400h hybrid SUV have similarly incurred the wrath of the ASA.

I have to say that when I saw Lexus' tag-line on the offending advert of "high performance, low emissions, zero guilt", my environmental hackles raised in scepticsm.

Turns out some people took their doubts to the ASA, and sure enough they've ruled that readers would infer from the headline that: "the car caused little or no harm to the environment, which was not the case, and had low emissions in comparison with all cars, which was also not the case."

According to the BBC report, Lexus company spokesman Scott Brownlee said: "We weren't trying to be misleading and any changes that are needed, we will certainly make."

I did a market survey to see how many people believed the first part of his statement. Turns out a full 100% of people think he probably ought to invest in asbestos underpants and would stick fake eyelashes on a 4x4 in an instant if he thought it would up his sales figures...

* should I mention I only asked one person? Well I say asked, more of an internal dialogue really. Nah, I doubt it's important.