50% More Worcestershire Sauce!



This past week we purchased the bottle on the right above - French's "Classic" Worcestershire sauce, in the 15 oz. size - to replace the old one on the left with the "New and Improved!" label.

The label of the new bottle indicates that it has 50% MORE* (with the asterisk). I can't reproduce the letter size here, but it's approximately a 48 point font.

On the right below that in bold italics is Excellent Value! in a ~14-point font.

And beneath that the clarification *Compared to 10 FL. OZ. products. in ~12-point italics.

One can't argue with the mathematics.  The question is whether this is deceptive advertising.  Does this labelling cynically take advantage of inattentive shoppers, or is it a truthful, clever marketing ploy?

Everything based in marketing is for the purpose to persuade the buyer to buy (or buy into) crap they don't need. Ahh, the classical "New and Improved", my favorite oxymoron. If something is new, you can't have improved on it, and if it's been improved, it's defiantly not new. In the end it cancels each other out, so it means absolutely nothing about the product itself. Marketing is one of those subjects I dislike with a passion, to go deep into it you either have to blind yourself into believing your doing good for the consumer, or believe that people are sheep that need to be guided in order to survive.
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Maybe their main competitor's bottle is the 10oz size? Maybe we're thinking they're comparing to their own regular size but they're thinking they're comparing to their competition's regular size? I wish I had a bottle of Lee and Perrins brand handy to see how big it is.
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It's not deceptive,because the claim is true. What you infer/take away from it is up to you and if you are decieved by your own assumptions (albeit the very one they want you to draw), you have no one to blame but yourself.

That said, it is truthful and clever marketing that is presented in such a way as to take advantage of inattentive shoppers.
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I wonder if they will market their 10 oz size as "More convenient" than larger bottles. Maybe even have a 3 oz "Go Anywhere" variety.

I just stick with Lea and Perrins myself.
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I've been ranting about this for years based on some shampoo bottles we used to get that would be 20 oz bottles and exclaim 25% more! (than our 16 oz bottle). Nothing new, and in my opinion, nothing to complain about. It's a way to get the less observant of us.
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I LOVE IT!! Back in High School I was so interested in art I seriously considered a career in advertising. This is one reason why. How many artforms are applied to make a person buy a 15oz bottle of sauce?
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The question is did it cost as much as a 15oz bottle or a 10oz bottle?

If it cost as much as a 10oz bottle you did in fact get 50% more for the price.
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The bottles appear to be the same size, so they could have made a smaller bottle and charged less for it, while using less material. They could have filled the bottle full and saved on shipping empty bottle space. Either way, it would have probably saved them what "50% more" has made them in extra sales.
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I also figure it's a dig at the standard Lea and Perrins size; although in the UK they do have a regular and a large bottle choice. (And we don't have French's, or indeed any competitor except store own-brands)

Actually, I always buy the smaller bottles of L&P because (perhaps irrationally) I assume it is going to be fresher, since it takes me so long to use up a bottle.
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This same thing happened with some dried fruit I bought a while ago. It was a 20-oz package and the big letters on front proudly declared: "Twice as large as a 10-ounce bag!" I was cracking up when I read that.
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a long long time ago... when i used to live off of hot pockets... the packaging suddenly started saying that there was now 30% more filling, but the size stayed the same as well as the oz for the hot pocket. i really doubted that they lessened the amount of crust. ive always wondered where they got their measurements.
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Could have been written a bit better, but I see the point. Trickery that we should come to expect.

seekshelter "30% more filling" doesn't refer to the filling inside the hot pockets, but how much more filling they feel inside your tummy.
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How much Worcestershire sauce does a person go through?
I economize in other areas and dont worry about it with Worcestershire sauce, I go high end, in small bottles.
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if this irks you I wonder if you've noticed the ads on Sun Chips 25% Less Fat (or some various percentage) less fat and then in tiny font below (than other chips)

The assumption is that these are now lower in fat than they were before, but really... they're just lower in fat comparitively. Either way they don't drive my decision making but I've pointed it out to more than one confused friend who assumed they're just continiously reducing the fat in the chips.
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Dutchboy- You're right about most people probably not needing a large bottle for their day to day saucing needs, it wouldn't make a big difference in my normal grocery budget either. However, I sometimes do need a bigger quanitity and the savings might matter when I make beef jerky. I make beef jerky in very large batches and one of the key ingredients in the recipe is worcestershire sauce. I could also see people making marinades for big items like briskets caring about the bigger bottle. You wouldn't really want to use a high-end one for those kinds of things and might need a large quantity at an economical price.
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Things can indeed be new and improved. Consider if there was a new type of tissue made of a fabric. With regard to the old material of tissue, the product is now completely new. However, the tissue also serves the exact same purposes as before... so if the change to the new fabric improved the purpose of the tissue, the product is new and improved.
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