Free May Cost You

One often hears it said that there is “no free lunch”. Tell that to your neighborhood hippie. He (or she) will probably be surprised that you do not know that “food just is”.
In the world, however, especially the world of commerce, nothing “just is”. Everything has to be made, grown, processed, and sold. Farmers who give their crops away at cost will soon stop being farmers. Many already did.

An ad in a certain newspaper I saw promised readers an irresistible deal, acronyms slightly changed: FREE XTM GUMSTER TOT WITH ACTIVATION OF A CHUPA X DRAMP (a $99.99 value). I assume that the readers of this ad knew what it was all about. The ad did not say what the item costs but the word “free” was there in big white letters on red background. The maker, it seems, was trying to slip us the hippie thing: merchandise “just is”. Caveat emptor!

But the little word “free” is so soothing in the shopper’s ear. Merchants use it all the time. “Buy one get one free”, you see it on every other ad. Often this message is followed by an amendmend in smaller print: “with card”. Occasionally there are further restrictions marked by a symbol like *. Such a footnote then leads the shopper to the bottom of the page where it says in even smaller print: “clip coupon to card”. And at this point you still do not know what each item actually costs. Never mind, just stay in line. You will find out. But you can be sure it is not free.

Complete and blatant untruths in advertising are of course banned by law. The little half truths described above are the only ones that vendors and manufacturers can use and get away with. But there is also a more subtle way to use deception in advertising: splitting the message into two parts, one manifestly true, the other somewhat murky. The Tesla Motors Company, for example, displays a proud sign on all new cars. It says in bold letters “NO EMISSIONS”. The Company is free to say this with a straight face by law because it is true: a Tesla car ejects no emissions. It has no fuel burning engine. It does not even have an exhaust pipe. This is the first part of the ploy. The second part is the virtual grin and wink that emanates from the sign on the car. It is Elon Musk’s little secret of which we are all aware, of course, but which we conveniently forget, namely that the power the car runs on is generated somewhere else, and power generation still produces plenty of emissions. The advertiser does not deny that and thus is home free.

Donald Trump would probably explain that this is called business and that the advertisers are just smart. As for the rest of us, we are still the same hippies. We pretend to believe that electricity “just is”.

(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
Picture credit: Fermilab