True of False?
______Bottled Water Makes Acid Rain Fall on Playgrounds
______Bottled Water is the Primary Cause of Restless Leg Syndrome
______Bottled Water Causes Blindness in Puppies
______Bottled Water: 98% Melted Ice Caps. 2% Polar Bear Tears
If you chose true for any of the above statements because you’ve seen them in anti-bottled water advertising, you’ve been duped. The makers of the reusable water bottle, Tappening, have started an advertising campaign full of lies about bottled water.
What’s their justification for lying? On the Start a Lie website, they make it clear. If bottled water companies can lie, so can everyone else. They make sure, though, that the fine print identifies the statements as lies – something that the bottled water companies do not.
There are two parts to Tappening’s campaign. The first part has to do with their own less than truthful advertising statements. They will have wild postings of these ads in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas. They also believe that downloadable versions of these ads will go viral as people spread them through Facebook, Twitter, Digg and e-mail.
The second part gives their website users the abilities to start their own lies. At the Start a Lie website, users have the ability to create lies about bottled water. Here are a few of the clever ones I noticed while reading through them.
Bottled water causes unexpected and involuntary outbursts of your deepest darkest secrets to the world on You Tube.
Bottled water can get you pregnant. Even [if] you are a male.
Bottled water filmed "Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".
Bottled water is not a natural born citizen. Where's the birth certificate, bottled water?
Once a lie is created on the website, anyone can send that lie on its viral way, with the disclaimer “if they can lie, so can you. Find out the truth at tappening.com or spread your own lie at startalie.com.”
The ultimate goal of this campaign is to educate the public that although the billions of dollars spent on marketing bottled water create the illusion that bottled water is better than tap, in the words of Tappening partner Eric Yaverbaum, “that’s simply not true.” The folks at Tappening hope to discourage the unnecessary use of bottled water and get people to turn to the tap. If their blatant lies can accomplish this, then I suppose they will have, despite what their mothers taught them, created a situation where two wrongs end up making things right.
I'm good with this. The lies are outrageous enough and the fact that the statements are lies accompanies each statement. What do you think? Do two wrongs make a right in this situation?