What Advertises May Not Say And Do?

By Author: Jordon
Total Articles: 91
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The mass media can be used to invest products with characteristics they do not posses: and the potential consumer has no immediate way to test many of the claims in ad Therefore, in the United States a number of rules and laws have been developed t combat deceptive advertising.

In 1914, Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act. Section 5 declares "un fair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce" to be unlawful. In Section 12 the act forbids false advertisements Omega Replica for "food, drugs, devices or cosmetics." False ac advertisements are defined in Section 15 not only as those containing "material" miser presentations but also as those failing to reveal material facts about the consequence that may result from use of the advertised product.

In June 1986, the FTC charged the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company with violating the law banning false and deceptive advertising. At issue was a print ad titled "C Cigarettes and Science" that ran in twenty-five newspapers and magazines from February through June 1985. ...
... The ad, cast as an editorial, alleged that the results of a major federally funded, national health study (the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Train called into question the link between smoking and heart disease. The ad argued, "The controversy over smoking and health remains an open one."

Administrative law judge Montgomery K. Hyun ruled against the FTC, noting that the advertisement did not name any of the Reynolds brands or discuss their attributes. Rather, Hyun said, it expressed the company's view on smoking and health. The ad did not lose its status as constitutionally protected speech; he went on, merely because it coincided with the company's economic interest.

The FTC indicated that it would appeal the ruling. Matthew L. Myers, director of the Coalition on Smoking or Health (a private organization that had asked the com-mission to file the complaint), said that the ruling "amounts to a license to lie to the American public."

In June 1990, the issue was resolved. Under the settlement, R. J. Reynolds agreed in future ads not to misrepresent the results of the government study. During the four years of the controversy, however, the distorting information had stood. The tobacco company, in effect, had gained a four-year reprieve.

Some claims about a product are straightforward and easily confirmed or disconfirmed. That was the case with the dietary supplement called Vitamin O, whose ads in USA Today and on the Internet suggested that "administered orally [it] allows oxygen molecules to be absorbed through the gastrointestinal track; [it] prevents and is an effective treatment for life-threatening diseases, including cancer and pulmonary disease." Not so, said the FTC. Calling these claims "blatantly false and unsubstantiated," on March 11, 1999, the FTC filed a complaint against Rock Creek Products in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington in Spokane. "This case brings home the message that unsubstantiated and outlandish claims for dietary supplements will not be tolerated," said Jodie Bernstein, director of FTC's Bureau Tag Heuer Replica of Consumer Protection. "It also should remind the media that they can do their readers an important service by screening ads and refusing to run those that are clearly false."

Determining whether an ad distorts is not as simple as it may at first seem, however. An examination of a number of advertising claims will illustrate when an ad is materially deceptive and when it is not.

Product Characteristics The product seen in the ad must look and act like the real product that the consumer buys. The color of the product as shown in the ad must approximate the actual color; the advertiser cannot recolor the grape juice to make it look a deeper purple than it actually is, or retouch the milk to make it look whiter or the lipstick to make it look rosier. Color can be enhanced in products other than the one being sold, however. Thus, for example, if the display in the ad shows chicken, the product being sold, on a plate with green beans, the advertiser can add color to the beans but not to the chicken.