Why in other countries is the carbon content on blanks noted? Purely marketing? Required (like truth in advertising)?

Example (dripping with buzzwords of course): "The incredible SVF fibre is up to 99.8% carbon and combines precise resin control with unidirectional graphite fibre to make one of the lightest, strongest and most sensitive blanks ever developed "

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Alex,

With words like "up to", you could sell a glass blank under the label and not be lying. Also, is that percentage by volume, or percentage by weight. It would have to be by volume, as a blank with that much carbon wouldn't have much holding it together. Personally, I would write it off as marketing hype.

Joe

Joe - some of the same thoughts I had - but regardless - still interesting to look at the differences in how things are marketed in different places.

The other ones I've seen have not been nearly this "colorful" in the description. Usually it's just been in the corner of a flyer where it said "Carbon X%, Glass X%"

Here's an example from Shimano on the Surf Leader Surf Rods - "Constructed with 99.7% of carbon ..."

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2009 03:52PM by Alex Dziengielewski.

Words mean things...or not. For example - I can do between one and two hundred pushups. ;)

It was done here back in the 1980's and involved a lot of word play intended to mislead the consumer. Some companies claimed their rods contained 100% carbon fiber, insinuating something that wasn't quite true, although technically correct. Although they may have used only carbon fiber in the rod, there is no such thing as a 100% carbon fiber rod - there is resin, paint, etc., involved as well. Other companies would base the carbon fiber content on a percentage of overall rod make-up, which was a bit more honest, but it made their rods pale against the companies that marketed with more clever wording. So the marketing statements weren't exactly apples to apples. In time, the consumers were less interested in the amount of various fiber content of the rod and such marketing fell by the wayside. It would very well come full circle, of course.

..............

It is marketing hype! It is like the paper industry advertising that some brands of facial and bathroom tissue contained Lanolin. As someone who spent 40 years in the paper industry, I can safely tell you that Lanolin does absolutely NOTHING for either tissue! But boy did it influence many buyers of the products. What was it Ringling said about fooling the people?

Today in our field of rod building there are similarities in the hype re modulus.

It was P. T Barnum, best as I remember, not to be picky.
Bill

It was Barnum who said, "There is a sucker born every minute." It was Abe Lincoln who said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Thanks Tom - It's very easy to still find this regarding rods marketed overseas.

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If anglers were blindfolded and cast a selection of rods comparable in length and weight the "more is better" and "newest is best" impact of marketing hype would probably become clearer to them.