Consumer Conspiracy - Television Tropes & Idioms

This commercial pitch uses the approach of offering the consumer secret information that some industry "doesn't want you to know about". This can be investment tips the financial industry doesn't want you to know about. Miracle cures the medical industry doesn't want you to know about. Tax tips the IRS doesn't want you to know about. Even low furniture prices the other stores don't want you to know about.

You're not supposed to stop and think that these secrets are being sold over the mass media and if these industries really didn't want you to know about them, you wouldn't.

Examples:

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Advertising

Every infomercial Kevin Trudeau has ever made.
- Not just Trudeau; every All Natural Snake Oil peddler claims that their products are being suppressed by "Big Pharma" and the FDA. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them are also involved in conspiracy theorist circles.
- According to The Other Wiki (and many, many documents online), Trudeau is a convicted felon (for credit card fraud and larceny), has been sued multiple times by the Federal Trade Commision, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and at least eight US states, and has been held in contempt of court for violating judicial sanctions against promotions related to his books. Virtually the only thing he can do without fear of FTC/SEC reprisal is sell books, which are a form of protected speech (and thus are immune to censure under the First Amendment). He also has a podcast/talk show that only the most desperate of radio stations have taken (and usually just to fill time when their local baseball/football team isn't playing on Sundays).
A local law firm that specializes in disability rights literally starts with "I'm going to tell you a government secret."
- Binder & Binder?
Matthew Lesko, AKA "That tax code guy in a suit borrowed from The Riddler" claims his book's full of money the gov.'s giving away and how to get it. All of this programs can be found in free pamphlets from the government, though the fact that he's put them in a well-organized compendium volume is, as a product, excusable, even if his dress sense isn't.
- Not really, since his book is (by his own admission no less) mostly just copied word-for-word from a completely different book, also available for free. Also, very little of the money he's talking about is available for individuals—mostly it's for groups or corporations—so most people wouldn't qualify anyway.
Car filters that'll add miles to your gas's performance. In principle, it makes sense; if cars were super-efficient, less gas would be sold, meaning less money for oil barons, who of course run the world. In practice, it's idiotic; equivalent technologies are already in use; think "fuel injection" for starters.
- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader makes a very cogent point about those '1,000 Mile' filter claims: why would a car company sit quietly, for years, on a technology that adds hundreds of miles to an automobile's performance? It would make them a fortune on the open market, and since they could have a patent in a matter of months, it would give any of them a massive advantage over their competition.
- Likewise, if your friend brags about the amazing gas mileage his car will soon get and shows you the copper-coil-in-a-Mason jar rigging he just installed under the hood, hold onto your monocle for this one: your friend is an idiot.
There was one commercial for a TV service competing against cable (probably DirecTV) where the woman narrating it says "she only has a few seconds to tell you what the cable company doesn't want you to know" because they're about to stop her.
Credit Counseling/Debt Consolidation services "the credit card companies don't want you to know about". Ironic because a number of these services are operated by the credit card companies themselves: If you declare bankruptcy, credit card debt is most likely to get discharged, so they'd rather help you cut a deal and at least get something.
- A variant in the UK is ads for debt write-off services. These claim to be able to write off all debts taken out before 2007, either "thanks to a recent law change" or due to a "government scheme". All of this is lies; the worst that could be done is the debts are found unenforceable on a technicality, which is substantially different from a write off (the debt not being enforceable just means they can't take you to court over it, however you still owe the money and the bank can still mark you as having defaulted). Worse still, judges in cases that have gone to court have seen right through the intentions of people trying these technicalities and turned them down. Oh yeah, and this service costs money.
A variant is keeping that information from their own management: "We will offer these low prices until our boss catches on" or "While the finance department is on vacation we can offer these low prices" or (for a radio station) "Our boss is away so we can give away these really cool prizes". Either the people selling the product are lying to their own company about their selling activities (indicating they are underhanded cheats) or they are lying to the potential customer (indicating roughly the same thing). Why would I buy from someone who is an admitted liar?
- It's called The Power of Cheese.
- It's called the power of solidarity. In real life, nobody treats ethics as a set of purely abstract principles; almost every social consideration takes group fidelity into account, and people generally don't consider bosses to be "on their side", so who cares if they're lied to? The more fundamental lie here is that (successful) salespersons are ever on the side of the customers.
Especially during bleak economic times, this shows up in commercials attempting to sell "investors' kits" for the purchasing of stable commodities, particularly gold (at least in the United States). The pitch is that you're part of a wise secret club that's using information that those Wall Street fatcats don't want you to know about in order to make yourself recession-proof.
Questionable beauty secrets (tooth whitening, flat belly, etc.) advertised in Web banners and, always and always, "discovered by a mom."
- The tooth whitening one usually bills itself as the "tooth-whitening secret the dentists DO NOT want you to know about."
- Here's an inside secret — toothpastes, shampoos, etc, are called parity products. 'Parity' means that they're all pretty much the same formula, so each company can legally call their product the 'best', because they're all the same. It's when one company starts claiming their product is 'better than' another that the law steps in, because 'better' is a claim of superiority and must be proven.
From the Cable/Satellite Mudslinging file, Direc TV "hacks into" various cable channels encouraging alternative methods of viewing. Since the channels themselves retain national advertising time, they are free to take ads from whoever they want.
A constant stream of ads, TV specials, shows, and movies about how you can beat the casinos. The casinos fund or support most of them.

Western Animation

Chuck Garabedian from The Simpsons episode "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo:"
Are you tired of missing out on the good things in life - family vacations, jet packs, solid gold dancers? Well, stick around, 'cause I'm gonna tell you the twelve savings secrets Wall Street won't tell you. Then, I'll show you the three ways to get back to the highway, [sotto:] including one shortcut those Wall Street fat cats don't want you to know!
- Later on the family finds him rooting through their garbage; he responds "You fat cats didn't finish your plankton; now it's mine!"

Web Original