What a load of plonkers – Nature Valley gets sums wrong in its adverts

What a load of plonkers – Nature Valley gets sums wrong in its adverts

Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis

25 August 2011

The following picture says it all. I’ve ranted before about the ridiculous mis-phrasing of numbers in the UK, (see my You cannot give 110% effort blog) but this takes the biscuit…(or granola bar).

What a load of plonkers – Nature Valley gets sums wrong in its adverts

What a load of plonkers – Nature Valley gets sums wrong in its adverts

Thanks to @stephencgrant for the picture who sent it to my Twitter feed (via @lewiscook).

For those who don’t see the problem. If you DOUBLE something, that is an increase of 100%. An increase of 200% means you treble the amount. On the day of the GCSE results coming out, is our national numeracy so bad, that no one in the ad department, agency or even any of the media buyers spotted this basic maths error?

I am tempted to suggest that people start writing to Nature Valley to demand the missing third bar.

PS. An updated thought: Nature Valley, if you read this and want to give a voucher for a free bar to people to make up for the error, I’d be happy to put it in my weekly email – which goes to 6m people.

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