Dive Brief:
- Snapple has printed "Real Facts" on its bottle cap since 2002. The factoids are meant to be cute and surprising.
- Examples include things like "Elephants only sleep two hours a day"—which is wrong. Elephants sleep three to seven hours a night. A slew of the "Real Facts" are either incorrect, outdated or misleading, according to researchers.
- Legions of Snapple drinkers have stumbled on to the fact that "Real Facts" aren't really facts—prompting angry social media posts, "investigative" Web sites, and a viral photo of a fake bottle cap that reads "Half of all "Real Facts" are actually fake.
Dive Insight:
The most annoying thing about this story is Snapple's reaction. The company is aware of the problem, but simply denies that the problem is a "real fact." The company's vice president of marketing says Snapple uses a "vigorous" fact-checking process and reviews the "real facts" yearly. Given how easy it is to prove "real facts" are wrong using nothing more than a Web browser, and given how many people have done just that, we find it unlikely that Snapple's claims of careful vetting are real facts.