40 Infuriating Pictures That Evil Companies Don’t Want You To See (New Pics)

Nowadays, it’s difficult to escape all of the information about goods and services. It seems omnipresent—on billboards while we’re driving to work, on TV while we’re watching our favorite shows, in pop-up ads while we’re scrolling on social media, and even in good old newspapers when we think we can escape the digital pressure that screens bring.

Whether we actively pay attention to what’s being advertised or not, chances are at least some of it sticks in our heads—especially when we catch a glimpse of a good deal, or something that seems too good to pass up. (Did an ad for some delicious food pop into your head? No? I guess it’s just me then.) Consequently, it can lead to us buying whatever it is that was advertised, sometimes even when we don’t really need it.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” And, well, it’s clear by looking at this list that the offerings are often presented in a very appealing, if somewhat deceptive, way.

But as long as the information provided in an ad, a billboard, or elsewhere is true, you can’t really say that a company did anything wrong by choosing a font that makes the number 8 look like a 0 from afar.

While discussing the persuasion and deception in marketing in a piece for Forbes, best-selling author and speaker Nick Leighton pointed out that, from an ethical standpoint, the line between making a bold statement to influence the target audience and providing information that’s outright deceptive can be quite blurry.

But, according to Leighton, there is an easy way to check if your claim steps over the bounds of being ethical – you can ask yourself if the claim has the potential to harm the consumer, whether financially, physically, or emotionally. If the answer is yes, the expert advises carefully re-evaluating your message.

Delving deeper into deceptive advertising, Nick Leighton suggested that there are seven red flags indicating unethical tactics in advertising. The first one is based on transparency and disclosure, or lack thereof.

“In many cases, it’s not what you say but what you don’t say that is deceptive,” the expert wrote, adding that sometimes, businesses or organizations choose to deliberately withhold important information in order to sway consumers.

Next on the list of red flags are exaggerated claims or misleading language, followed by manipulative imagery, all of which show that if a service or a product seems too good to be true—be it in the description or the pictures—chances are that it is too good to be true.

“Always make sure the claims your company makes are accurate and easily verified to avoid any accusations of deceptive business practices,” Leighton wrote.

The rest of the red flags implying that the company might be using deceptive advertising, entail false comparisons, hidden fees, bait-and-switch, false customer reviews, and misused statistics or cherry-picked data that backs the company’s claims of their products or services.

According to Nick Leighton, fixing the damage caused by misinformation and deception can be a difficult task, bearing in mind that people already aren’t that fond of ads—at least the digital kind—as it is.

Seeking to minimize the number of ads they are forced to sit through, many people use ad blockers, and the main reason for doing so, according to research carried out by HubSpot, is that ads are annoying and intrusive.

Other reasons why people reportedly dislike ads (the ones on their screens, at least) include their disruption, security concerns, reduced bandwidth use, offensive or inappropriate content, and privacy concerns.