Introduction About Limitations On Distortion

By Author: Adela
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The size of the product also must be represented accurately in the ad. An advertiser may not use a small soup bowl to make the amount of soup in a can seem more than it actually is. When the product is enlarged or visually distorted by camera angle, that fact must be disclosed. Often a product must be enlarged visually if the consumer is to appreciate its fine points, as with small articles of jewelry.

In such ads, the product's actual size Omega Replica Watches will be noted, the fact that the picture is an enlargement will be made clear, and a picture of the jewelry at its actual size will probably be included somewhere in the ad.

Advertisers are not permitted to construct a special instance of the product for the sake of the commercial. The product shown in the ad must be comparable to the typical product being produced, and it must be sold under the same name advertised.

Product Performance In a classic case of the deceptive use of a mock-up, the Colgate-Palmolive Company showed its Rapid Shave shaving cream softening sandpaper to the extent that ...
... the sandpaper could actually be shaved. The FTC received complaints from consumers who had tried to shave sandpaper with the product and had failed.

An investigation established that it was not actually sandpaper that was being shaved in the ad but glass lightly covered with bits of sand. The FTC challenged the ad. Colgate countered by arguing that sandpaper covered with Rapid Shave could indeed be shaved, but that sandpaper was of such a fine quality that the television viewer would not be able to see that it could be. Hence, Colgate argued, shaving glass was a simulation of what the product could actually do.

Could the product enable a razor to shave coarse sandpaper, the kind of sandpaper suggested by the demonstration? No, Colgate conceded. Colgate said, however, that it had tested its claim on fine sandpaper but had to use mock-up suggesting coarse sandpaper because the fine sandpaper would simply look like flat paper on television.

In the course of the investigation, the FTC also learned that even fine sandpaper could not be shaved as quickly as the mock-up implied, but only after being soaked for a long time. In the commercial, Rapid Shave was applied, and almost immediately the razor shaved the glass clean. The commercial did not indicate that it was taking place in a time span longer than that actually shown. Had it indicated that the elapsed time was ten or fifteen minutes, the FTC probably would not have challenged the ease and speed with which the shaving took place? The contest between the FTC and Colgate ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which ruled that when the point of the ad is to establish the reality of what is being demonstrated, the audience must be informed that a mock-up is being used.
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Puffery Advertising Copy Creates a World in Which Superlatives is Commonplace

This does not mean that viewers always see actual demonstrations on television. But when more time has elapsed in the course of a demonstration than that showed that fact will be indicated in the ad. When a demonstration is a re-creation of what happened, the commercial is likely to disclose that fact. And when substitutions are made for products-- when, for example, whipped potatoes are substituted for ice cream because ice cream would melt under the lights-- the ad will not draw attention to any characteristic of the ice cream that might be misrepresented by the potatoes.

The nature of television makes the accurate representation of some products, such as ice cream, difficult. When captured by the television camera, for example, coffee looks muddy. Because coffee advertisers have legitimate reasons for wanting to show coffee in their commercials, advertisers are permitted to substitute something that looks more like coffee than coffee does. Ironically, use of the actual product instead of a substitute would in this instance distort and be deceptive. But the FTC has banned the substitution of oil for coffee because it looks both darker and richer than actual coffee.

To differentiate their product from others, advertisers often offer demonstrations supposedly showing their product's comparative Cartier Replica superiority. As a general rule, both the FTC and the NAD require that such comparisons employ comparable products. Thus, for example, the NAD concluded that an advertiser could not compare its bias-belted tire with a competitor's lower-grade tire. Bias-belted tires must be compared with other bias belted, not with the lesser-grade bias-ply tires.

Similarly, the NAD ruled that an extra-thick spaghetti sauce must be compared with the extra-thick sauce manufactured by a competitor, not with the competitor's regular sauce. In the ad in question, the advertiser's extra-thick sauce and the regular sauce of the competitor were poured through kitchen strainers, creating an obvious but irrelevant demonstration of superiority for the advertised product.

Puffery advertising copy creates a world in which superlatives are commonplace. Products are "the very best," "the finest"; they produce "the cleanest, freshest washes," the "most beautiful," "softest" faces and hands. The systematic, habitual use of hyper-bole has diluted the power of the advertiser's vocabulary. If everything is "the best," how is a genuinely superior product to be described?

In keeping with this penchant for exaggeration, advertisers tend to place adjectives before nouns and adverbs before adjectives. For example, a wine isn't simply "fine," it is "really fine wine." The tar in a cigarette is not "low" but "ultra low," and Hallmark and Nestle make not the "best" but "the very best." This tendency conflicts with the need to make short, memorable claims. When adjectives and adverbs are pared from ad copy, it is often because the need for brevity has overcome the tendency toward hyperbole.

Most hyperbole is legally acceptable because it consists of subjective, no documentable, nonfactual opinions. Although I may taste a product touted for its fine taste and find the taste disagreeable, my opinion does not invalidate the claim in the ad. Taste is a matter of... taste. For legal purposes, aesthetic and value judgments generally fall under the label "puffery." Thus I can claim that a paper napkin is "beautiful," that the soft drink on which you are gagging "tastes great," and that cookies as hard as cement are as good as mother used to make; although you may disagree on all counts, I have made legally acceptable claims.