Internet advertising is a strange beast. Some of the most popular ads play directly off our insecurities – that we’re fat, that we’re lonely, or that our penis is far too small. The immediate emotional response to what basically amounts to a controlled insult online can gall you into the all important “click” of the ad.
While this emotional manipulation is effective, it doesn’t give you the ability to completely half ass your campaign and still expect no one to call you on it. I saw this ad online recently.
Please note if you have AdBlock or similar software installed, it may block the image as it has “ad” in the filename. Check your settings.
Seems rather benign, not unlike thousands of other ads you see every day. It’s not particularly well done, but if it didn’t make money it wouldn’t be out there. But there’s something else – I saw it, did a bit of a double take, and then looked again. The 35 pounds figure seems to be off, but more importantly, the body types of the two don’t quite seem to match up.
Wait a second, what’s that on the right side of the slimmer girl? There’s a hint of yellow on the edge of the frame. Let’s cut out the pictures of the two girls, and then flip them around and put them beside each other.
Well damn. Turns out that you just took a picture of two sisters, one slim, the other not so much, flipped it around, and then tried to pass it off as a weight loss ad. Sorry about the grey line in the middle, it’s because of the black borders around the ad cut out a little bit of the image. Next time, perhaps a bit more Photoshop work?
nicely done…
Wow, great work. Never would have noticed that!!
she lost 35 pounds, all of it bust…
I’d hit both of them. Both are cuties!! Nice!! Women are delicious beasts.
Funny, I saw that ad on myspace and thought, “I don’t think those are the same people.”
LOL, you gotta love PhotoShop!
Nice bit of irony that Google displays a weightloss ad on the right of your post. They lost 44 lbs, but no pictures unfortunately.
I’ll take the one in yellow any day.
#4, softly, I hope! These look like two beautiful sisters.
Good show!
Way to call out the dastardly bastards…not only is that simply bad form – it’s also damned lazy! I’d also lay $50 down in confidence that those girls didn’t get paid or release their images for ad use either. Cripes, I wouldn’t.
We covered a similar topic, but with a different angle: that photo layout / cropping can be downright misleading and a helluva let-down. Link: http://bit.ly/4f7sCQ
Keep up the clever sleuthing Geoff!
Well done sir! I home they didn’t pay the to much for that ad to be produced!
Seriously though, how could he not have noticed?
I’d hit em both!!! YuMM!
I’ll take the yellow one please.
Look at those Lois, bigger than your head!
Holy Chubby Chasers much..
Ew..
Wow that is rough. You see so many of these photos on weight loss sites now. Makes you wonder if they work at all.
WaOOOOooo
Nice one ! well well done 😉
haha nice…
vote up my advice for “How To Approach A Former Bush Supporter”
Rather funny, not that much of a surprise though. Not that many ads on the web are honest…
I raise my hat to you sir great detective work! She needs to tell her sister how she did it!
Haha nicely done Sherlock 🙂
Yeah I vote for yellow girl as well *g*
BUSTED! My, you got some sharp eyes there.
I noticed this was 2 different women, look at the faces. Geoff you make a valid point, half-assed marketing tricks like this makes it hard for all of us operating legitimate businesses online. We get lumped into the ‘scam B.S.’ with the losers who do this kind of thing.
Nice catch.
nice catch 🙂
Wow good catch on the photo ad and outing them! Good to see a man post here on the truths behind ads hitting on our insecurities as well! I totally agree and in fact am suffering from part my hair looking like a mess letting the gray hairs show again and have decided I’ll deal with it and stop coloring it and look my natural self again!
GREAT POST – LOVE the way YOU WROTE IT TOO!!!
Its bad when people do things like this but not all marketers lie to sell. If that was the case the world would be fool of nothing but bad products and service and based on the high quality of your work this is proven to be false.
So thanks for the insight and lets be aware of both the good and the bad I like review sites because they put the power in the hands of the people just like blogs. Thank for a great post 🙂 I may come out with a new weight loss program that’s guaranteed to work 100% of the time ” The Photo-shop Diet!” l.o.l
I see this all the time, especially on myspace and facebook. it makes me wonder how much the people that “design” these ads get paid!
hi….that picture is acatually of me and my friend. it was from 4 years ago and was not used with our permission by any means. we found out about it like a month ago. if anyone knows what can be done about people false advertising with pictures without permission please let me know.
also…..you said you’ve seen it on facebook? more than once? when?
Hi Jen,
I’m not sure what can be done, but the first step would be finding out the company responsible. I have a feeling it’s not so much a company as a guy in a basement (hence the lazy design) but it’s worth a shot.
I found it advertised on MySpace – I’ll see what I can do about digging around a bit. Email me if you have any questions.
Epic advertising FAIL. 🙂 Nice catch.
I was about to leave a grouchy reply saying that the ad isn’t visible, but I tried it in IE and I saw it. Apparently AdBlock plus (see my blog) blocked it, maybe try putting that up on notice because there’s quite some firefox users that have it.
Which is also the solution to online advertising by the way :3
Hi Zenon – Thanks for the tip, I’ve updated the post with a notice for AdBlock users.
You would think they would take the extra time to photoshop it. I love this kind of stuff.
always good to see BS unveiled! I’ll subscribe to your RSS
wow! that was clever. You got a eyesight of cat, Geoff. I really can locate the error in the pic until the point where you clearly mention that this is the loop hole. May be they cant afford two models hehe
I wouldn’t call this LAZY. I would call it FRAUD. Say it like it is!
nice catch man
When you put the girls back together, why is the one in yellow still linking arms with someone on her left side?
kylie… because there was another person in the picture? c’mon, girl, common sense. let’s use it.
That is still some effort to find a pic like that…In India, I see slimming ads that are way worse….they just pick anyone’s image and strech it (thats right…no need of hitech software…even ms paint will do!) and paste it as before…i mean…the woman must have gone through hell to lose so much weight…atleaset she could have changed her top for the after pic 😉
Geoff, great eye! Thanks for noting and sharing. I personally think that it’s way more important to create a trusted fan based than an immediate sale. Of course, as marketers we need to make sure we balance, but still tricking people into clicking (using whatever image) is wrong. This makes a bad name for online marketers.
I am just new to your blog and just spent about 1 hour and 30 minutes lurking and reading. I think I will frequent your blog from now on after going through some of your posts. I will definitely learn a lot from them.
BUSTED! LOL – thanks for this Geoff 🙂