It's Christmas time and the Duracell adverts are ever more prevalent. "Lasts longer, much longer" is the strapline, with the small print "than ordinary zinc carbon batteries". Now if I had the time to be an undercover geek I would take a hidden camera round the high street in search of zinc carbon batteries, I haven't seen any on display for years, could it be they keep them under the counter? No, they are obsolete and no-one sells them any-more, so Duracell could well be accused of pulling a slight fast one.
But I'm quite grateful, one can well argue that it was Duracell's earlier adverts that made zinc carbon batteries obsolete in the first place, competitors switched to alkaline batteries as the public became more aware of their superiority and I can now buy 24 pretty decent chinese made alkaline AA cells for about £2.50. Which brings me to the point of this post, while Duracell is permitted by the state to advertise in it's own particular way, drug advertising to the general public is banned in the UK (freedom of speech anyone?). Maybe if we were allowed to see a Duracell style advert for certain pharmaceuticals we wouldn't be so willing to accept the medical equivalents of zinc carbon batteries the NHS often supplies.
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