The Retail Revival: Reimagining Business for the New Age of Consumerism by Doug Stephens

Author:Doug Stephens [Stephens, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

6

Who Owns Your Brand?

There's a Commercial that has been running on TV as I have been writing this book. You might have seen it. It's for a product called 5-hour Energy, which is a two-ounce shot of liquid formulated to deliver what amounts to a temporary metabolic defibrillation and burst of wakeful consciousness—part of a balanced diet if you're a college student or truck driver. The brand was introduced to the market in 2004 and led a wave of other similar energy-shot brands. The effects of these energy shots have been widely debated, and because they're largely unregulated and not subject to rigorous government testing, the jury remains out on them.

Like most, I don't often listen intently to commercials. In fact, I record most of the shows I watch so that I can avoid commercials altogether. But there was something about this particular commercial that caught my attention.

If you haven't seen the ad, it features a very officious, credible-looking woman sitting on a desk beside a monstrous stack of papers—which we are led to believe are surveys. She confidently delivers the following dialogue:

We asked over 3,000 doctors to review 5-hour Energy and what they said was amazing. Over 73 percent who reviewed 5-hour Energy said they would recommend a low-calorie energy supplement to their healthy patients who use energy supplements—73 percent!

While she's speaking, a series of fine-print disclaimers appear at the bottom of the screen. You'd need to have a magnifying glass handy to read them.

I ran the stats she quoted over in my head once or twice. There was something about them that harkened me back to my seventh-grade algebra class. The whole thing sounded oddly like a trick question that a teacher with a modicum of dark humor might put on an exam to submarine his or her students. Something about this claim of “73 percent” just didn't wash.

So, I did what any self-respecting consumer would do. I took the issue to the mighty oracle Google! And after a quick search of “5-hour Energy +3,000 doctors,” I discovered that I was hardly the only one more than a little suspicious of the claim. In fact, there were literally hundreds of posts, queries and discussions from people who were every bit as dubious as I was.

What's more, some of the really smart ones out there had actually done the arithmetic. Here's what they discovered.

The 73 percent of doctors surveyed do not recommend 5-hour Energy, but rather only a low-calorie energy supplement, of which 5-hour Energy happens to be one of many.

These 2,190 doctors are not recommending low-calorie energy supplements for consumers in general, but rather only for those (healthy) patients who already use energy supplements—which by definition would be a much smaller group.

On close inspection, the fine print cagily admits the fact that of these 73 percent of doctors recommending low-cal supplements, only 56 percent (1,226) actually recommended 5-hour Energy based solely on reviewing the label and ingredients.

More fine print then sheds dim light on the survey's method, which

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