Speaking of GNC...
The main sales guy at my local GNC actually tells people who ask about this or that 'fat burner' pill "don't bother, they don't work".
He's obviously (from his physique) a bodybuilder with a great sense of humor. I rarely buy anything there, but when I'm at the mall, I like to stop by and say howdy to him.
Oh BTW...most of the time the people asking BUY THE PILLS ANYWAY!
Amazing!
Something else I wanted to say is - the supplement industry (heck, the diet industry in general!) spends WAY more on marketing and advertising than they do on product research.
They have the best people in the advertising business working for them - they KNOW what to say in those ads to entice even the most skeptical person to whip out their wallets. There are lots of people out there looking for the magic pill. Folks, it doesn't exist - the magic is changing your diet and exercise...PERMANENTLY. That's what's worked for me!
And about those "Before-and-after" photos you see in the Hydroxycut, Xenadrine, and other advertisements...here's a snippet of a most interesting article...
Quote:
Apparently, the appeal of before and after pics is a lesson that plenty of other supplement companies have learned. Just this past week, the Federal Trade Commission released a lengthy report entitled, "Weight Loss Advertising: An Analysis of Current Trends." I've read the all 52 pages and suffice it to say, the FTC isn't too thrilled with the state of the art. The report, rife with statistics, studied the advertising of some 200 companies and determined that they use any one or combination of nine different techniques (or ploys), as the FTC strongly indicates.
Among these categories are claims of fast results with no diet or exercise; use of natural ingredients; promises of long-term results; guaranteed results with preposterous claims; use of testimonials; and, you guessed it, use of before and after pics.
Here's what the FTC study had to say specifically on the subject of before and after pics:
Before and after pics usually fall into one of two categories: (1) the illustrated personal testimonial, and (2) the clinical comparison of isolated body portions. The former type often contains the following elements:
Before picture: Snapshot quality photograph of the subject that incorporates poor posture, neutral face expression, unkempt hair, unfashionable attire, poor lighting, and washed out skin tones.
After picture: Brightly lit (sometimes studio portrait quality) pose of smiling subject in fashionable attire, shoulders held back, tummy tucked in, with a stylish hairstyle and carefully applied makeup.
...often the only discernible difference in the before picture and the after picture is a change in posture and body control. In the before picture, the subject's shoulders are slumped, the abdominal muscles relaxed, and the pelvis thrust forward to emphasize body fat. The after picture shows the subject holding in his/her abdomen and/or holding back his/her shoulders to emphasize lean body mass. A close examination of the before picture in this type of ad raises the question of whether the subject needed to lose weight and suggests that little or no weight was actually lost.
Some before-and-after photographs clearly appear to have been altered, usually by placing an image of the after subject's head on the photographic image of another (very obese) subject's body.
Remarkably astute observations by the ol' FTC, don't you think? Granted, we made some similar observations about before and after pics used by one of our competitors before, specifically, pointing out that one of the people used in their ads as a "before" was actually pregnant. That little fact, however, wasn't disclosed in the ad...
Look how easy it is! The following "before and after" pics show T-man Davin Ramatour, who first appeared in Chris Shugart's Dawg School column in issue #105. Davin, looking sallow and portly in his before pics, used our new fat burner for just 6 weeks and look at the amazing transformation:
http://www.testosterone.net/img/photos/227tc1.jpg
http://www.testosterone.net/img/photos/227tc2.jpg
http://www.testosterone.net/img/photos/227tc4.jpg
Sure, we'll even throw in a made-up testimonial:
"6 weeks ago I weighed 240 pounds. Whenever I went to the local Sea World, people would become alarmed, throw a net over me, and dump me back into the walrus exhibit. It wasn't too bad, though. Got kind of friendly with one of the females and we dated for awhile. After I started using Biotest's new product, though, I lost a lot of blubber and I became grossly unappealing to her because, well, you know, walruses like blubber. Anyhow, thanks to Biotest, I was able to find the courage to ask out the girl who touts buckets of mackerel to our exhibit. We'll soon be moving in together, far, far away from any marine mammals."
Okay, so maybe you noticed the dates on the side of the film. The truth is, the before pics were taken about 5 minutes before the after pics, or as long as it took Davin to change his shorts, put up a different background, and readjust the lighting.
You can see how easy it is to do an ad that appeals to products of a failed educational system. So why don't we do it?
Maybe it's because we continue to make the mistake of trying to appeal to smart people, people who make value judgments by using their brain instead of some old dried up sponge that kinda' looks like a brain.
I know this is going to sound self-serving and a bit self righteous and maybe even holier-than-thou, but we don't want to make a living by courting dumb people. I know it would be oh-so easy to really spew out the BS and really rake in the dough, but darn it, we're the ones who want to go to sleep at night without having to wrestle with demons—big guys who'd no doubt emerge from our subconscience to take huge dumps of steaming guilt on the upholstery of our brains.
