[Click-baity Headline Goes Here]

The headline tells me I’m washing my dishes wrong.

But the story is – incredibly – that Procter & Gamble has developed a variant of packaging for Dawn dish detergent meant to be sprayed on dishes as they’re washed, rather than glooped into water to be turned into suds.

Yes, it’s a commercial for Dawn dish detergent. And now you’re reading a whiny critique of said commercial.

But it’s given a patina of newsworthiness by CNN business as they investigate – probably regurgitate – that Americans have changed the way they wash dishes, cleaning a few here and there as they’re cooking or whatnot, rather than washing a big round of dirty dishes all at once.*

Who does CNN business quote in this story?

Morgan Brashear, a home care senior scientist at P&G.

Kristine Decker, dish care director at P&G.

Khaled Samirah, research analyst at Euromonitor International, for, again, a patina of newsworthiness. I suppose. Though the quote comes in an odd context of analyzing why dish soap sales increased only 0.4% over the previous year. Because we should be buying MOAR SOAP every year to prop these companies up, I guess, rather than just spending about the same amount every year on cleaning supplies. You’ll be surprised to learn that this new Dawn iteration costs more than the regular stuff, so you’re really helping P&G out if you buy it. But lucky for you, you can get less expensive refills for the special spray bottle until you remember Dawn has a high viscosity and nobody has the kind of time on their hands it takes to refill the special bottle from the refill, so you just buy the special bottle at a higher cost over and over and over and over again.

Nowhere in this 894-word bylined story** is it said this is sponsored content – paid for by the company whose product is being discussed. And maybe nobody paid for it in cash. But the phrase quid pro quo is popular as of late. Maybe there’s a lot of P&G advertising about? I don’t know, as my browsers block advertising. Or at least try to. Nothing they can do with the ad comes looking like a story.

Full disclosure: We do have Dawn dish detergent in the house. It’s great as a clothing pre-wash (and Procter & Gamble, maker of Dawn, controls 46% of the dishwashing liquid market in the United States, the story tells me). But we use Palmolive (a mere 17% of the market, by the way) in the dish sink. And for this endorsement, neither Procter & Gamble nor Colgate-Palmolive have paid me a cent.



*Not at our house. We’re still warehousing dirty dishes to be washed in massive dishwashing sessions once they are gathered from the four corners of our house. If you’re not afraid the pile of clean dishes in the drainer is going to topple over and kill you, you have not washed enough dishes.

**This critique comes in at only 514 words, including footnotes.