What's the Real Truth?

As a copywriter I am tasked with finding a way to sell a product via the written word. This involves market research and a lot of hard work. Interviewing the creators of the product and buyers helps round out that research.

Then comes the writing. As a writer my job is to find a way to create compelling copy that makes people open their wallets and spend their hard earned money. This is much easier if the product is something people already want.

I just read about a product that I have purchased myself many times through the years. The sad truth is I was probably ripped off. So are most of the other folks that buy this product.

How many of you have bought “stone-ground flour”? If you saw those words on the label of a bag of flour I bet you assumed the flour was actually stone-ground. I know I did. Apparently the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) doesn’t have any specific requirements set up for this product. So just about any type of flour can be sold with this label. According to an article in the March 14th version of USA Today General Mills sells Gold Medal stone-ground flour. But according to a company spokesperson that only means “the flour product has passed through an actual stone mill at least once”.

Apparently there are only a few dozen stone mills left in the US. It’s just too expensive to mill flour this way, plus you can’t make white flour in a stone mill.

I’m not sure what that means but the article states most flour sold in the US as “stone-ground” probably never rubbed up against a piece of stone. I don’t really feel all that strongly about stone-ground flour one way or the other but I don’t like to be lied to or misled. If the label says it’s stone-ground, I expect it to be ground up into flour by stones, not metal rollers.

If I wrote an ad or sales piece and made claims that simply weren’t true my client and I would both be in big trouble with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). How do these folks get away with it? I don’t know but I will certainly examine the next package of “stone-ground flour” I see. Maybe the label will be more forthcoming. And I doubt I will buy any more unless the package can guarantee me the flour was ground between real stone millstones.

This article opened my eyes. I wonder how many other food products we buy as consumers assuming the label means exactly what it says. So if stone-ground flour is important to you, a little research can help make sure you are getting what you pay for. For me, I guess I just want to be told the truth.

My BS meter just jumped up another notch. This just reiterates the importance of making sure my sales copy maintains believability and explains the truth about the products I am selling. I think I’ll do some research myself. Find all the stone mills and offer to write some sales copy for them. Maybe we can sell more of the real stone-ground flour to people that thought that’s what they were getting all along.