Thursday, October 7, 2010

╠ Who needs the truth, when lies are more believable? ╣


So over at the good old Facebooks I was invited to this curious event. The event instructed people to go 30 days without eating Arnotts shapes.

The event claims Arnott's have 'snuck' palm oil into their products and are therefore lying about their claim of using vegetable oil. The side effect to this being that palm oil is a 'leading cause of deforestation'.

So therefore to save the forests of the world everyone should stop eating Arnott's for 30 days. The curious thing is that the event offers no proof, nothing more than one paragraph of information. This event currently has over 3600 attendees and it's still going considering the event will only end come Oct 22nd.

So with zero actual proof that's 3600 that have potentially changed their habits for this event. The fact that it's 30 days as well is quite interesting because if you do something straight for 21 days, say not eat shapes, then any cravings are meant to leave your system...of course this is on average and ignores things such as cigarettes. This points out that it will not simply be 30 days of damage, but there could also be follow on.

So who's behind it, surely some random page that no longer has any admins? No just one person, who if they are fake has gone to a lot of effort to be fake. The amusing point from here is that effectiveness leads to damage and damage has to be paid. So Miss Amy Smith I hope you have very deep pockets when Mr. Arnott comes to sue for damages.

8 comments:

SeanOCD said...

While the event has been set up in a pretty weak attempt at a protest, it is addressing a serious issue.
Palm Oil is a serious problem. Not only environmentally, but also health wise.
I must admitt, I'm 'attending', but if I hadn't already been aware of the situation the page itself wouldn't have concinced me.

Unknown said...

I hadn't even thought of the defamation aspect, but I investigated this personally and yes; you are quite correct. This is admittedly libel.

(I was trying to get some info on who Amy Smith represented)

http://crushtor.tumblr.com/post/1266559496/palm-oil-madness

Anonymous said...

Another thing to note is that 3600 is really quite tiny when you look at Arnotts market share. There are over 1400 Coles and Supermarkets in Australia. Then there are also IGA's and other independant supermarkets and 7 Eleven stores that all stock Shapes. There would undoubtedly be over 2000 suppliers of Shapes Australia wide. Thats less than 2 people per store not eating shapes. How much do shapes cost... it varies but around 2.50 if they aren't on sale. How much do they cost to make? I don't know, but I'd assume about 50c a box. Thats a $2 profit margin, some of which would go to the supermarket, and some of which would go to Arnotts (lets over estimate and guess that Arnotts get $1.50 per box) Most of the people on this site wouldn't eat shapes more than twice a week anyway, so lets total that.

($1.50 profit per box)x(2 boxes per week)x(4 weeks)x3600 People=$43,000

Now that might seem like a lot, thats pretty much a worst case scenario.
Just because people joined the facebook ground doesn't mean they'll remember not to buy Shapes when they go tot he supermarket... some of the probably never ate Shapes anyway. An for those who do decide not to get shapes will probably get another sort of biscuit. Arnotts are the biggest biscuit company in Australia... they own CC's, Tiny Teddies, Tim Tams, Savoys and countless other biscuit products. Chances are the people who don't eat shapes will just buy another type Arnotts biscuit anyway.

Time for another numbers games.
Arnotts revenue is $1.2 billion a year. Its not worth them suing for damages from one person to the value of $43,000. Their legal team would probably charge more to sue them than they would get back.

Wes Towers said...

Just goes to show how powerful or damaging Facebook can be when used in the right or wrong way, respectively.

Thanks for pointing this out.

CNA Classes Online said...

Good stuff man, respect to prodigy, one of the legends in the game and respected.

i_am_so_ninja said...

even if shapes dont have palm oil in them ( im not saying that i know they do, but any way) nestle owns arnotts and nestle is not fair trade so that is also another reason that you should not buy shapes

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