Or maybe not. Browsing the sports section of the DT yesterday, I discovered I'd been reading the body copy of a Fiat ad. Evidently the unaccustomed words "Even fuel is free for a year*" had woken me up. Suddenly alert, my next task was to track down the matching asterisk.
In the process, I realised that actually it mentioned free petrol in the headline, too - just that the headline was made out of fancy slanting coloured graphics, press-ganged into the visual and obviously not intended to be read.
Soldiering on, I worked my way through the small(ish) print at the bottom of the ad... but nothing about free fuel there. On the verge of giving up, just in time I spotted some VERY small print at the top of the page. (Starch was right: messages placed above visuals get significantly less readership than those placed below.)
Straining at the VERY small print, now I discover that the car pictured (£11860 OTR) is not the car being advertised (£8560 OTR)... why do they do that in automotive? Could it be to undermine the credibility of their sales messages?
They may as well go on to say the petrol deal has strings attached: "*Free fuel will be paid up to a value of £1000" ... something like that, anyway.
