Gary Rhodes is on a mission. A mission to convince people that a crappy margarine product tastes marginally better than awful. He goes around in a camper van, giving people Flora Buttery and recording their suppressed grimaces.
This advert goes down the slightly taboo route of naming a competitor. It’s an approach that tends to antagonise the competitor in question for obvious reasons. In this particular case, the competitor is Lurpak Lighter Spreadable and the advert follows a Pepsi Challenge sort of pattern, comparing reactions to both products.
The advert concludes that:
More people preferred the taste of Flora Buttery
This is probably a fair point if you’re comparing the taste of Flora Buttery with uranium, or Benalyn, or dog shit, but slightly less fair in the case of Lurpak Spreadable. Because the small print says this:
Out of 200 people tested, 48% preferred Flora Buttery Taste, 45% Lurpak Lighter Spreadable, 7% had no preference.
In other words, the Flora Buttery people happily admit that from their own sample (200), the majority of people (104) actually preferred Lurpak Lighter Spreadable or had no preference than expressed a preference from their own product (96).
I like Gary Rhodes. He’s a fine chef and seems like a nice bloke. But this advert is shit.
EDIT: The advert was subsequently banned for these misleading figures