I know it’s been hard for both readers of this blog, but I’ve had to take a week-long sabbatical due to a heavy dose of man-flu (it’s not ‘just a cold’, okay??)
You can put away those violins now, but one thing that hacks me off while I’ve got a cold is how consciously aware I am of those ‘cold & flu remedy’ ads, aimed at me, and the barrage of utter bullshit contained within them.
Let’s have it right – nothing, but nothing, but nothing ‘gets rid of your cold’ or ‘shortens your cold’ or ‘gets you back on your feet’.
You will feel like crap and be less productive, no matter which spray you stick up your hooter or which ‘wonderpill’ you take. A cold takes as long as it takes to go. It’s a virus. If it wants to saunter round your nostrils a little longer, then it will do.
What started this mini-rant is an ad I saw yesterday. Take a butcher’s at this:
Okay, I’m going to put it out there: this product will do bugger all to shorten your cold.
It’s like that Vick’s ‘First Defence’ product that’s supposed to ‘stop a cold in its tracks’.
You have to spray the stuff up your nose when you think you might be getting cold, and it stops the cold coming out properly.
So, essentially, you have to constantly preempt getting a cold, which would mean spraying it up your nose every day of your life. Brilliant.
I’m loving this stat in the Coldzyme ad, too; ‘with over 8.5 million doses used last year…’
That’s ‘doses’, not ‘bottles’. Let’s say that a bottle contains 30 ‘doses’ of spray, that brings the number of bottles sold to around 300,000…. not quite as mighty a figure as 8.5 million.
I’m not a fan of stuff like that. As consumers, we’re not idiots. If I’ve noticed that they didn’t say ‘bottles’, but ‘doses’, I’m sure others have, too.
And now, to blow my nose….