How many left-handed people are there? No-one knows. Let’s assume it’s approximately 10%. Of all the people in the world who brush their teeth, how many do so using their right hand? Of those who are right-handed, and who brush their teeth with their right hand, how many of them place the tube of toothpaste on the left side of the basin, ready to squeeze the paste with the left hand, while carrying the toothbrush with the right hand?
A thorough study needs to be conducted. By my humble experiments and observations and simple surveys, I believe that the overwhelming majority of all users will place the tube of toothpaste on the left side, in the way that it is shown below. This means that, for most Colgate users, they have grown accustomed to seeing the Colgate logo unside down. I have been making this observation (publicly) for over fifteen years. I am still waiting for the day when Colgate (and others) ascertain the need to flip their logo around so that their consumers can start to see the logo, the correct way around.
Below is a rough mock-up of how the tube should be printed.
These and similar traditions become entrenched, invisible, and immutable. Who, of all the people who work at Colgate-Palmolive would have the eyes to see, and the gall to question such a thing.
Perhaps Colgate-Palmolive has more to worry about, with counterfeit toothpaste entering the US market. The silly duffers who are breaking the law, might have got away with it if they had done their research. They printed ‘Manufactured in South Africa’ on the box. Colgate does not import toothpaste into the USA from South Africa. A little detail for the Colgate insider. But the dead give-away was the bad spelling. Oh the number of emails I receive from scammers who say that they are from PayPal or Amazon or a local bank, each containing bad spelling. I have told my Indian friends (to whom I offer speech therapy and English language training) that Indians can conquer the world-of-commerce if they can rectify their accent. They have so much to offer the world, yet they just simply do not understand how their strong accent and mega-fast speech is an incomprehensiblesuperfastjammedupsingsongthatnoonecandecipher.
Similarly, scammers would be much more successful if they just employed the services of a professional editor. The counterfeit Colgate toothpaste had this on the box: ‘South African Dental Assoxiation.’ Silly duffers. Stupid importers. Crazy retailers. The retailers are as much to blame as anyone else. What do they think they are doing by importing products on the cheap, from an irregular distributor? Not only are they breaking the law, they are also placing lives at risk. Who knows how this stuff is manufactured or what chemicals it might contain!
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