Beginner's Fitness Programs

There are so many products out there. To distinguish themselves from the others, many companies are using millions of dollars for advertisements. It is really a science, applied psychology. Unfortunately, many advertising companies know so much about persuading people to buy products, people are buying even they do not need them.

Although there are many, many ways to stimulate people’s minds, one I would like to talk about here is the testimonial, since almost every weight loss product uses this technique to trap people into buying their product.

One of the most used testimonial is before and after pictures. One advertisement said “I lost 84 pounds in 12 weeks” at the top, and in the testimonial, “I thought it would take a miracle to lose over eighty pounds. But thanks to XXXXX, I did it!”, and wow, she looks great on the picture. People see this advertisement think “gee, I just need to lose 40 lb, and it should be really easy, since this product can make me lose 80 lb in 12 weeks”. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. Even the advertisement says “These results are not typical” (in, of course, small prints).

What wrong with this? This product seems to work. Sure, I may not lose 80 lb, but surely I could lose 40 lb, don’t you think? Well, it is not that simple. Yes, she lost 80 lb plus, but did the advertisement mentions what else she did?

Here is how many testimonial advertisements work. Ask people who used the product, and select one or two of the best results out. It could be that there were 10,000 people used this product and 5,000 people did not lose a pound, 4,999 people lost 2 pounds, but one lady lost 80lb! So let’s use her as a show case. And she is on the advertisement! OK, this is a bit exaggerated, but you get the point, right?

Many advertisements also do not tell what else these testimonial people did, other than taking their products. If you just read the advertisement, it seems to you that if you take the product, you can lose 80 lb even if you are lying on a bed all day long. In a real case, however, these testimonial people often went though very hard weight loss programs at the same time as taking the product. In some cases, it was supervised by the companies which sell the products. Think about it, if you do a 1,500 calorie a day diet, and workout with a personal trainer 3 times a day 1.5 hours each, don’t you think that you could lose weight even without the product?

Here are a few points to help decide whether you can trust the testimonial as a proof.
If the testimonial is accompanied by statistics that support the testimonial. For example, if the statistics says that there are 1,000 samples, and about 20% lost 10lb, 20% lost 20lb, 20% lost 30lb, 20% lost 40lb, 10% did not lose any, and the last 10% lost more than 50lb. Then, there is a good chance that this testimonial is a good example, even though it is an extreme case. Make sure that these statistics are published data, not just an internal study. You can fake the internal data quite easily (see cigarette companies).

If the testimonial is accompanied with references in major scientific publications (at least 5 references), it is usually reliable. Again, however, you need to check yourself that these publications and studies are real and unbiased ones. In some cases, a referenced study was totally unrelated, other than in regards to some compounds used in the product.

If the testimonial is come from a third party which does not gain anything by supporting the product, e.g., a government test, and some university studies. However, you need to be careful about university studies, since a professor testifying for the product could be an owner of the company. This happens often in the medically related fields.

Anyway, if you see a testimonial advertisement, first distrust it, then look into whether there are any facts in it. This is a good way to avoid getting hooked by the advertisement.

Source: This article appeared first in www.seikin.com.

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