Boycotts And Legal Actions In Adverting

By Author: Jordon
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What can a consumer do if the regulatory and self-regulatory mechanisms dismiss the complaint? Because the relationship among the consumer, the advertiser, and the media outlet is an economic one, the consumer can threaten a boycott of the advertised product or the sponsored program or both if the desired change does not take place? To make this threat credible, the consumer must be able to marshal a large number of like-minded people willing to carry out the boycott. As we shall see, the threat of a boycott often eliminates the need for an actual boycott.

Advertisers want to avoid boycotts for a number of reasons. First, negative publicity in the news is more believable than advertising and functions as negative advertising. In addition, if an advertising agency produces Omega Seamaster Replica an ad that triggers a boycott, then it will lose the client's business—especially if sales begin to drop off or if the boycott seems so well organized and widespread that it will create negative associations in the public's mind with the manufacturer's ...
... other products. Consequently, the advertising agency is uniquely susceptible to pressure to change offensive ads. Groups of consumers can put pressure on the ad agency that produced the ad, the mass media outlet that carried the ad, or the manufacturer that produced the advertised product.

Similarly, groups can marshal members of the community to cancel subscriptions to an offending newspaper or turn off an offending news program. If this tactic works and the size of the audience declines, the media outlet's profits are threatened; it can no longer deliver the desired audience to the advertisers. Groups also can exert indirect economic pressure by persuading advertisers not to buy space on time from the offending media.

Our ability to influence the media through legal action is constrained by the laws gov-rning the agencies we seek to influence. Before 1966, only persons who had a clear economic stake in a case were able to intervene in the FCC licensing of a station. This changed with a challenge to the renewal of the license of WLBT, a Jackson, Mississippi, television station. In this case, the court ruled that "civic associations, professional societies, unions, churches, and educational institutions or associations" may contest an application for a stations renewal of license. This decision gave such groups legal standing on the grounds that "the holders of broadcasting licenses [must] be responsive to the needs of the audience."

Notice that not all individuals or groups have legal standing. To have legal standing, an individual must be a member of a group that represents a substantial portion of viewers or listeners and has a legitimate and genuine interest in the station's performance in the community. The challengers in the 1966 case, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, argued that although the city of Jackson was 45 percent African American, the station was not sensitive to matters of concern to the African American population.

In response to this decision, a number of groups representing the interests of special segments of the audience focused their attention on the license renewal process. These included not only the pioneering Office of Omega Replica Communication of the United Church of Christ but also the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund in New York, which seeks to increase minority involvement; Action for Children's Television in Newton Centre, Massachusetts; and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in San Francisco.
Such groups are able to produce change not just through actual transfer of licenses but also by threatening to intervene in the licensing process if change does not occur. For example, in 1969, an African American coalition reached an agreement with KTAL-TV in Texarkana, Texas, under which news coverage, programming, and employment practices were altered. In return, the coalition withdrew its petition to deny the renewal of the station's license.