A New Advertising Technique?

Someone stopped me in the street the other day, asking for directions to Ponsonby Road.  I pointed out the general direction, showed him the way on my smartphone, and he thanked me.  So far so good.

"Oh, by the way", he then said, "I have a restaurant - have you heard of <insert restaurant name>?"
"Umm", I replied, humouring him, "well, I know there's one in Mission Bay."
He pulled out a little card, labelled "VIP card", with a 25% discount offer printed on the back, and proceeded to write my name and the date on it, then signed it.  Well, that's nice, I thought.  What a clever way of making me take his advertising, which I never would have done otherwise.

Then it got a bit weird.  "Can I have your number for our restaurant records?", he asked.  Not wanting to risk offence, I gave it to him, though I secretly thought it was intruding on my privacy.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised when I later received two text messages, one letting me know he found the place he was looking for, the next inviting me again to his restaurant.

He might have had a clever marketing tactic to begin with, but his forwardness has all but ensured I will not be visiting.

The Latest Marketing Gimmick: fruit drinks with 50% less sugar

The supermarkets have changed in the short time we were away in Europe.  Suddenly, the shelves are now filled with what looked like juice with 50% less sugar.  Hang on, I said to myself, how did they extract the sugar from the juice?  But how wonderful that they can, since I always mix my juice with an equal amount of water anyway, to soften its natural sweetness.

Same price, same brand.  Not obvious at all that one is a juice and one is a fruit drink.

Well, I discovered the answer on reading the label.  This new "juice" has 50% less sugar, because it is less than 50% juice.  That's right, what you are paying for is mostly water, mixed with juice and sweetener, a natural sweetener called stevia which is apparently all the rage these days.

Ingredients of the fruit flavoured drink with stevia.

And Just Juice isn't the only company doing this.  Charlie's also has a 50% less sugar range.  I wouldn't be surprised if all the other juice companies do the same.

I get it, it's a great way to make money if you can sell half the juice for the same price (okay, less than half the juice, plus some sweetener, colour, and flavour enhancer).  But why are people buying this stuff?  Isn't it just as easy and much more economical to simply mix some water with your juice?  Who wants it to be that sweet anyway?

Final rant: why are companies allowed to be named "Just Juice" and "Simply Squeezed", when their products are not what their name implies?