By Alan Graner
An asterisk in an ad indicates bad news. Nothing good was ever asterisked. Even worse, in electronic ads the asterisk never actually appears, though the asterisked material does.
Behold!
Print ads
You see an airline ad boasting an incredibly low fare. You get excited. At last you can afford to visit grandma.
And then…the dreaded asterisk.
At the bottom of the ad (in tiny type) is what Paul Harvey called “the rest of the story.” True, the fare is low. However….There are airport fees, airport taxes and baggage fees, each piled atop the other until the low fare is now a high fare. It’s not fair.
There’s the great lease price on the car you’ve always wanted but thought was way out of your price range.
And then…the dreaded asterisk.
Yes, the monthly rate is low, but only because there’s $4,500 due at signing…plus dealer fees, delivery fees and taxes. Another dream dashed on the rocks of reality.
Email ads
There’s an interesting law—opt-out—which states if you send an unsolicited email ad you must allow the recipient the right to unsubscribe. And most do.
But just try to find the unsubscribe button. Invariably there’s tiny type at the bottom with all kinds of required information including, if you can find it, the words “unsubscribe here”. Good luck with that.
TV and radio ads
You’d think it would be impossible to insert an asterisk into a TV or radio ad, and you’d be right. Sort of. Oh, the asterisk is there but you can’t see it. But you can hear it.
The ad for that miracle drug? As you watch touching scenes of happy families or people without pain the voiceover narrator softly intones the list of horrors (aka side effects): dizziness, loss of memory, vomiting, internal bleeding, erectile dysfunction and the always pleasant “in some cases may cause death.”
The radio asterisk is a bit different, yet still distinct. After 45 seconds of pleasant narration the voiceover suddenly shifts into high gear as it suddenly lists the disclaimers in speech almost too fast for the human ear to discern.
What are some clever ways asterisks have fooled you?
Image: CC0 Public Domain license via Pixabay
Alan Graner is Chief Creative Officer at Daly-Swartz Public Relations, an Orange County, CA business public relations and marketing content firm. For content that makes you stand out from the crowd, email Jeffrey Swartz at jeffreyswartz@dsprel.com. Or visit www.dsprel.com.
