I’m seeing red at the moment, it’s sort of following on from my rant of yesterday about eggs and butter.

There is a TV ad showing at the moment here in the UK, the contents of which should be shameful to all those who made it. Yep, I’m talking about the Flora Buttery ad in case you’ve not guessed.

A brief synopsis of the ad (for anyone who either hasn’t seen it or is outside of the UK) is as follows:

Gary Rhodes (UK celebrity chef and cheeky chappie) is supposedly going round the UK in a VW camper van demonstrating to the nation how much better Flora Buttery is than a leading brand of spreadable butter – I think I’ve got the phrase right but certainly that’s its message. He does this on the basis of some market research commissioned by Van Den Berghs (assuming they’re still the proud brand owner) that says that Flora Buttery is preferred to Lurpak Light Spreadable in blind taste tests.

OK so the facts of the matter are these. The research (200 consumers) is hardly the most robust sample size in the first instance. Secondly, if you read the small print on the ad, you’ll see that only 48% preferred Flora Buttery to 45% who preferred Lurpak. Just to help the poor sods (brand manager and ad company execs) who put this together that basically means that 96 of the 200 preferred FB, while 90 of them preferred Lurpak. The remaining 14 didn’t express a preference. It’s a few months since I looked at doing any serious significance testing but I’d be VERY surprised to find that 96 compared to 90 was statistically significant in mathematical terms and it certainly isn’t significant in moral terms.

That’s just the basic maths/morals. Then you have to consider the product Flora Buttery was put up against. I’d be prepared to place a bet that in a blind taste test that Lurpak light is a bit of a dog anyway as far as taste is concerned, not that I've tasted it myself. I’ll bet against other spreadable butters it fares worse than it does against Flora Buttery. It’s my cynicism coming out in shovel-fuls but if you wanted to prove how good your brand was over the competition, I’ll bet you’d chose a right dog……who wouldn’t if your handsome bonus depended on the use of such information was at stake.

So, to summarise, we have a product that is questionably marginally better than another product, being advertised by a celebrity chef and cheeky chappie (who, by the way, I had a fair amount of respect for before).

Now let me see……I wonder what Gary Rhodes is spreading on HIS toast this evening. Do you think there is the slightest snowball in hell’s chance it’s Flora Buttery? I somehow doubt it. My analysis of his books and shows is that he is a heavy user of butter (real butter, from cows). You NEVER see a recipe in his book saying you need 100g of Flora Buttery. Never. Never. Never.

So, I’m seeing red. Bright red. From hero to zero in one easy movement.