When Marketing Goes Bonkers

One plain white facecloth

I bought a packet of plain white facecloths to take off my mascara because I was tired of throwing out cotton wool. (So very ungreen.) The label did make me laugh though.
Exclusive of Decoration.
Exclusive of Ornamentation.
It says.
How bonkers is that?
I bought them because they were plain white cloths. I could see they were plain white clothes. I didn't need to be reassured that they were free of adornment so why did they write that?


The world of marketing has started to use what's missed out as a way to convince buyers that it's great to buy their products. This started as a good thing: "no added sugar" written on fruit bars to compare them with less healthy versions, "no animal ingredients" for vegan food. After that, once people got accustomed to the idea that "no added" meant "this is a good thing" then marketers started to make meaningless "no added" statements as reasons to buy stuff. As a person who's been trained in marketing, and even used to teach it, I find this shamefully lacking in creativity.

When marketing people can't be bothered to think of something good to say, they make up something that sounds as if it might be bad, then boast that their product doesn't have it. E numbers. Have marketing people convinced you that E numbers are bad? The E means that they have been tested for safety and approved by the EU. It's when a number doesn't have an E that it's dodgy. Safe natural colours and flavours all have E numbers. Safe synthetics do too. Implying that a product is better because it doesn't have something that's harmless is wicked and lazy.

Although in the case of plain white facecloths, it's so ridiculous it's also quite funny.