I just had a shower. Nothing special about that, but looking at my shampoo I noticed that it contains Herbal. The shower gel also. I brush my teeth with Herbal toothpaste. Lately Herbal is everywhere. Answers.com defines herbal as “relating to, or containing herbs“.

My toothpaste contains 5 herbal ingredients. The producer gives me the names of these herbs in Latin. What he doesn’t know is that I don’t speak Latin, nor other 99,9% of his consumers. Does he care about this? No. Because he chosen not to give us the basic information that we would need, but to create the image of a product similar to the ancient magic potions prepared by the witchdoctor. This is why my toothpaste contains “Chamaemelum nobile” and not “Chamomile”.

In the last few years Herbal became a fashion. You can see it in many products. It gives us the impression of natural and healthy products. But is it the truth or just another invention? All I know is that herbs are green, but my shampoo is blue, my shower gel is white, the toothpaste has 3 colors and I can not see the smallest organic particle in any of them.

Welcome to the world of magic! When do we first encounter magic in our life? I guess it is our childhood, when we see cartoons full of magic, our mother reading us stories with witches and magic potions and so on. Many people say that magic doesn’t exist. But it DOES! And we believe in it every day.

Today, our life is full of products with magic powers. One example is Colgate. I am sure you watched their commercials, but have you noticed the ingredients that Colgate promotes? Here is a small list, I am sure you can find out more.

• Micro Cleaning Crystals
• Mini Breath Strips
• MFP® (Maximum Fluoride Protection) Fluoride Gel
• Calcium and Fluoride Protection
• Cooling Crystals
• Herbal
• Clean Mind (not the dirty one)

What are these things anyway? What crystals are these? Where do they find it? Do we really care? Does it make a difference? Do the guys in the lab actually know about it, or it is just something that the marketing department came-up with? I would personally go for the second.

But we like to believe in these magical ingredients. We buy Colgate because “Hey, this one has Cooling Crystals! It has to be good.”

Next time you buy Colgate try to think different “I am buying Colgate because… I am out of toothpaste.” Any other product will do more or less the same thing.

There are many products on the market and for those that want to satisfy the same needs, it is very hard to be different. Soap is just a product that helps you be clean and smell nice. But there are many types and brands of soap. How easy is it then to be different? Many producers adopt different techniques to be better than the others. Better look, better smell, better colour and so on.

But in many cases, the producers use something else (or at least the marketing department does). They use the magic ingredient. Why is it magic? Because nobody knows what it is, but the ads say that it makes it better, more effective and more attractive. The average consumers don’t think too much about and just buy the product because it has the magic ingredient.

There are many examples on the market and in next posts we will go through many products that contain magic ingredients. If you already know some products like this, just leave a comment and I make sure it will make it in a future post.