FlightGlobal presents cookies in a very positive light in order to not ring any alarms

No, Internet cookies aren't that benign. In any case, saying only that cookies are useful and omitting mentioning the many concerns which led to such notices being made mandatory is deceitful.

Maruti Suzuki is deceptively capitalizing on the equity in the word 'hybrid' in order to sell its barely-hybrid Ciaz in India

What's more, Maruti Suzuki has gone a step further by calling its Ciaz variant "Smart Hybrid", as if this were an even more advanced/evolved technology than merely 'hybrid'. Not. This is hardly the hybrid in the true sense of the word. In percentage terms, it's perhaps only 5-10% of what a true hybrid - like Toyota Prius - is. Facts be damned. It's important to fool the Indian public, which, like the people of the rest of the world attach a significant premium and prestige to the word 'hybrid'. Of course, no one's gonna tell these folks that the so-called "Smart Hybrid" is hardly even hybrid.

UPDATE [19-MAR-17]: Many other companies use this tactic of "stealing" the equity or value inherently present in some words, terms, etc. Examples include naming a job "Data Scientist", or Hyundai's "Grand i10" which has nothing grand about it. Other commonly added words include "Royal", "Classic", "Officer", "Gold", etc.

Falsely calling so-called plus-sized women beautiful in order to score points with feminist-type females [COMPACTIDEA]

No these fatties aren't beautiful. They're obese and total fatties who should control their diets and resort to regular exercise and work. They're in no way better than those razor-thin, underweight and skinny models, as far as projecting "real women" is concerned. This whole political correctness and feminism-licking thing going on is irritating, frankly. And it will fail eventually [just like falling subscriptions forced Playboy to bring back nudity]. What's pretty is pretty. What's hot is hot. What isn't isn't.

Mahindra falsely calls its KUV100 a SUV, while in reality it's just a small hatchback car [COMPACTIDEA]

Merely giving a car the shape of a SUV but not the size doesn't qualify it as a SUV. Mahindra knows no one will challenge its characterization, hence the blatant lie. Of course, Mahindra should be heavily fined for this cheap trick, but obviously nothing is really going to happen.

Renault compares features of its Lodgy car to that of a cheaper variant of Suzuki's Ertiga in a marketing brochure [COMPACTIDEA]

Comparing a more expensive variant of your car to a cheaper variant of your chief competitor's car without telling the audience/readers is outright fraud and desperate.

Samsung uses 'Quantum dot display' term to make it look like its TVs use sci-fi technology [COMPACTIDEA]

Quantum dot display has nothing to do with the 'quantum' of physics. Just a marketing term Samsung is using to steal the "wow" equity attached to the word 'quantum'. Samsung and Hyundai are two companies that - I've seen over the years - frequently resort to such cheap, unsophisticated, childish and overall deplorable marketing tactics. Chaos movie was also like this - it had no connection whatsoever to the chaos theory.

Companies like Airtel now use the word free even for those things that are clearly paid [COMPACTIDEA]

Airtel says 3 GB data is free, when it's actually INR 100 per month. It's quite common to see Airtel using/misusing the word 'free' in its marketing material to refer to paid things. Doesn't look accidental - looks planned.

Update: Airtel says it's offering "free voice calls to anywhere in India", but there are two key problems:

1. Only one of the two listed packs offers zero-charge calls to any network across India.
2. These calls cannot be called "free", since in order to get them you have to recharge with a paid pack.

McDonald's tries to appeal to people's narcissism by giving advertising-laden stickers for free, to be pasted on cars' windshields [COMPACTIDEA]

Purportedly, these stickers about you winning prizes/offers/discounts. In reality, McDonald's is simply appealing to the prevalent narcissism in people today, to give people a false/fake sense of being important as an incentive to paste this, and to give them something to show to others ["VIP" is written in large size, and clearly this stupid sticker alone doesn't make anyone a VIP]. Also, McDonald's gets free advertising this way. Never mind the threat to safety that comes from pasting a sticker on the front windshield.

In marketing material, Renault makes its tiny car KWID look much larger than it really is by using photography tricks

No objects/people are shown near the car, so the viewer can't estimate the size of the car. This is deliberate - so that this tiny car looks large. Further, photographs of the car show close-ups of its various parts in large size, to give the impression of bigness. Nothing more than cheap tricks intended to deceive.

Annualised yield is a cheap and obscene trick that banks and other financial companies use to make returns look more than actual

A newsletter of Kotak Mahindra Bank:

These days even reputed and respected companies highlight the annual/annualised/annualized yield [or cumulative yield] instead of the actual interest rate at which the principal amount is compounded, in order to fool the general public into believing that the interest rate he's getting on his fixed deposit or bonds is higher than it really is.

Emphasis by mobile telecom companies to switch to e-bill, under the guise of "go green" and "save trees"

The real objective, obviously, is to save money on physical paper bill [printing, packaging, courier delivery, etc.]. In typical MBA/marketing style, this rational business decision is packaged in an attractive story with the theme "save the environment/planet". Who cares how much it costs the environment to produce and run those computers, those servers, those displays...

The basic idea that companies are following here is to give people a compelling reason to behave the way firms want people to behave. Merely suggesting/telling people to take certain actions or to choose something [without attaching a list of benefits for multiple stakeholders] will result in a lower conversion rate. Repackaging the same suggestions with hard-to-ignore and heart-touching reasons/stories will convince people that what's being asked of them or has been told to them is good for them. Absent this good-for-everyone message, fewer people will switch to paperless bills.

Image from 15-Aug-10

Update [9-Jun-17]: More bullshit. It comes in green color.

Jul'12 image

Mar'15 email