Wondering if someone might fine one of your Ads unfair or deceptive?
Ask yourself the following, its what the FTC would consider:
1. Is it likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances.
2. Does it omit ”material” information to a consumer’s decision to buy or use the product.
3. Does it cause or is it likely to cause substantial consumer injury.
If your answer is yes to any of the 3 questions, you have a bad ad!
Question: I was reading one of your posts on Auttr.com and learned that whenever I advertise, any and all material limitations or exclusions must be disclosed in a clear and conspicuous fashion. Can you give me a few pointers as to what this might mean on my website?
Answer: Putting this into practice on your website, consider try the following:
Place disclosures near, and wherever possible, on the same screen as the claim.
Use text or visual cues to prompt disclosure review.
With hyperlink use, make the link obvious.
Include complete disclosures on click thru pages.
Make disclosures on banner ads or the page to which the banner ad links.
Repeat disclosures on lengthy ads.
A quick thought about determining whether a dealership advertisement is unfair or deceptive: Often times, what an advertisement does NOT say is as important as what it does!
Here’s a somewhat embarrassing legal question for you. Suppose a telemarketer calls me up and says, “switch to our tool, it’s twice as good and half as expensive.” I believe the message and switch. The recession hits, my business slows down, and I think to myself, pretty smart that I’m not stuck with that big monthly bill now that I have the new tool.
Then I learn that the telemarketer’s company was sued by the tool I used to have for false advertising and lost. Then I hear that lots of dealers who didn’t believe the “twice as good” claim and didn’t switch loss less business over the last year than I did. Do I have any legal grounds for recovering lost revenue, or at least getting a refund of the $500 a month I spent as a result of the now proven false advertising?
Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.
US companies will spend more this year on digital and online advertising and marketing than on print for the first time ever, according to a study released on Monday. Companies will spend 119.6 billion dollars on online and digital strategies and 111.5 billion dollars on newspaper and magazine advertisements and other print campaigns, according to the study by California-based Outsell.
Given the current economy and how precious advertising dollars are to all businesses, listed below is insight from Bill Bernbach. He was a legendary advertising executive who some say was the king of all Mad Men (reference to popular TV show) and he created well-known ad campaigns for VW. Keep in mind that in his day, there was no Social Networking or Internet.
1. The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.
2. Word of mouth is the best medium of all.
3. It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator’s skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.
4. Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.
5. You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.
6. Forget words like ‘hard sell’ and ’soft sell.’ That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you’re saying it like it’s never been said before.
7. Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed… but dull?
8. No matter how skillful you are, you can’t invent a product advantage that doesn’t exist. And if you do, and it’s just a gimmick, it’s going to fall apart anyway.
9. Our job is to sell our clients’ merchandise… not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.
10. Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.
11. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.
12. Properly practiced creativity must result in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.
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L.J. Marhefka 10:36 pm on June 25, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
In the first paragraph you indicate that you made a smart decision by making the switch. You haven’t stated that the product isn’t working for you. What are your actual damages?
oldsalt 10:45 pm on June 25, 2010 Permalink
My business declined 15% which I attributed to the recession, but other dealers very similar to me who didn’t switch only lost 5%. So if I had not made the switch and only lost 5% like my peer group, the damages is the additional 10% of lost revenue.