Card Stacking
The United States of America is a very large nation, and it is very hard for telecom companies to cover all of the landmass. In this advertisement, Verizon Wireless attempts to manipulate the thought process of consumers by incorporating Card Stacking technique, a method of manipulating data through exaggerated or false statistics, into the ad above. In the advertisement, there are two maps of the US shown side by side comparing the coverage of people using Verizon Wireless and AT&T and below that it is stated that Verizon has five times more coverage. At first glance this seems like legitimate statistics, rather than a propaganda technique, but below the ad, small words faded into the background state that the “Comparison [is] based on square miles covered with 36 voice & data services available outside 36 coverage area”. While the statement is quite complicated, what it basically means is that the maps, which shows the statistics, were shown in the best way to rank Verizon over AT&T. Although the statistics themselves are not fake, it is still card-stacking since the statistics are biased and only support one side of the argument.
Brighthand, Ed Hardy. Digital image. AT&T Drops Lawsuit Over Verizon TV Ads. N.p., 3 Dec. 2009. Web.
<http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=15956&news=Verizon+ATT>.
Brighthand, Ed Hardy. Digital image. AT&T Drops Lawsuit Over Verizon TV Ads. N.p., 3 Dec. 2009. Web.
<http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=15956&news=Verizon+ATT>.