Tom F&L GoR
Enthusiast
You may have seen various Castrol GTX advertisements about sludge - their oil is 57% better, or jobs of sludge fall from the sky and stop the actor/car in its tracks. The National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau determined that these ads are misleading. (Duh.)
Castrol took the results of a European OEM engine test (a proprietary test, so not peer reviewed procedures and therefore only applicable to that OEM in a particular type of service) and by means of the advertising message portrayed that their oil is better for sludge in all US engine applications. This is a really poor attempt at a superiority claim since Castrol should know that the definitive test for sludge in the broad US market application is the Sequence V test, and if their oil was truly superior, they should have used it instead.
Reference a previous posting about Valvoline and my comments that Valvoline had to be extracting a sliver of data to make their claims; Castrol is doing the same, except I am really surprised that in this case Castrol did not even have access to the statistical reproducibility of the test. They had no leg to stand on and they knew it from the beginning.
Castrol is now owned by BP America. While they claim they will appeal to the next higher authority, I see this only as a time-wasting measure to continue running the ad. Since the *** procedure is a voluntary, self-regulating body there is no risk of punitive damages. When it's over, they will simply stop running the ad.
The *** is the same body that determined the auto industry does not have data to show "traditional" synthetics are different or better than Group III base oils. This allowed Castrol to continue advertising their oil as synthetic, despite Mobil's objections. I agree with this one.
Click to this site http://www.nadreview.org/start.aspx and scroll down to "*** EXAMINES ADVERTISING FOR CASTROL GTX - November 20, 2008 "
Castrol took the results of a European OEM engine test (a proprietary test, so not peer reviewed procedures and therefore only applicable to that OEM in a particular type of service) and by means of the advertising message portrayed that their oil is better for sludge in all US engine applications. This is a really poor attempt at a superiority claim since Castrol should know that the definitive test for sludge in the broad US market application is the Sequence V test, and if their oil was truly superior, they should have used it instead.
Reference a previous posting about Valvoline and my comments that Valvoline had to be extracting a sliver of data to make their claims; Castrol is doing the same, except I am really surprised that in this case Castrol did not even have access to the statistical reproducibility of the test. They had no leg to stand on and they knew it from the beginning.
Castrol is now owned by BP America. While they claim they will appeal to the next higher authority, I see this only as a time-wasting measure to continue running the ad. Since the *** procedure is a voluntary, self-regulating body there is no risk of punitive damages. When it's over, they will simply stop running the ad.
The *** is the same body that determined the auto industry does not have data to show "traditional" synthetics are different or better than Group III base oils. This allowed Castrol to continue advertising their oil as synthetic, despite Mobil's objections. I agree with this one.
Click to this site http://www.nadreview.org/start.aspx and scroll down to "*** EXAMINES ADVERTISING FOR CASTROL GTX - November 20, 2008 "
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