Mystery marketing

Do any of you think Twizzlers is a diet food?

I realize us consumers aren’t always the brightest bunch, but I think most of us realize that a flavored string of gooey corn syrup, sugar and some other stuff can’t be considered essential to a diet.

Yes, but truth is misleading. At least that’s the claim in a proposed class action filed last week in the Supreme Court of the State of New York against The Hershey Company.

The complaint begins with an explanation that sugar is bad for you and then says the label on Twizzlers that says it is a “low fat snack” is misleading even though it’s true. Twizzlers have 0 grams of fat.

Twizzlers are misbranded, the suit said, because they became low fat without the benefit of special processing to make them that way. There was no processing of a food that includes palm oil, artificial flavor and artificial color red 40 to make it less fattening.

“The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) confirmed that describing a food such as Twizzlers as a ‘low fat snack,’ when all licorice candy is inherently low in fat, could mislead consumers.” Purchasers could be misled by “an implication that a particular food has been altered to lower one aspect of its nutrient contract … when in fact all foods of that type are naturally free of, or low in, that particular nutrient.”

If you’ve been trying to lose weight on the Twizzlers diet, you’re in for a shock.

By the way, an Internet search will lead you to an NBC News article that says Twizzlers “aren’t a terrible choice if you eat less than the serving size” and take your time eating it.

Isn’t that true of everything?

Truth is so misleading.

Customer disservice. I’m not a business guy. I don’t know a thing about marketing. But like any sports or theater fan, I think I can spot a bad play.

It sure seems like suing your own potential customers is a bad idea, but X Corp. last week filed an antitrust suit against a group of big-time advertisers who supposedly engaged in a “group boycott.”

“Defendants conspired, along with dozens of non-defendant co-conspirators, to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from Twitter, Inc.”

This is a “naked restraint of trade without countervailing benefits to competition or consumers,” the suit said.

I’m not quite sure what consumers are missing out on — ads for Mars Bars since Mars, Inc. is a defendant? — but let’s suppose X wins this case. Do all these companies then run ads on X?

They may not need an organized boycott for that choice.

This is worse marketing than a guy supporting climate denier candidates trying to sell electric cars to people who believe in climate change. Who would do that?

Oh, wait …

Supervision. I admit it. I’ve been a nervous Nellie and a professional skeptic and a naysayer.

And I’ve been right.

Last fall, I scoffed at a State Bar of California proposal for a “portfolio bar exam” that consisted of working for a lawyer instead of taking a test. I wondered where all these supervising lawyers were going to come from.

Could some of them be, perhaps, not the best and most responsible lawyers out there? Who supervises the supervisors?

Ok, I’m being mean. But isn’t that part of my job?

Anyhow, we have a small bit of evidence now showing us how this program might work (or not work). I direct you to a federal judge’s ruling in a case in which the plaintiffs are a lawyer and a person described as “allegedly a verified law student completing his fourth year of academic legal studies and practical legal training under plaintiff Krause.”

I’m not sure the training is going well.

One of the defendants was the State Bar of California. I won’t go into detail but it did not go well for the plaintiffs.06

One of the claims by the lawyer plaintiff was that his State Bar prosecution amounted to elder abuse.

You can decide for yourself what kind of supervision the poor student is getting — and whether the State Bar will remember this litigation when it comes to deciding to admit the guy.

Subscribe to our columns

Want new op-eds sent directly to your inbox? Subscribe below!

Email *

Author

Submit