Consider the following examples of common advertising strategies, and think about whether they apply to your current marketing paradigm.   If they do, then you need to act quickly to bring your marketing strategy into compliance with the law.

These advertisements usually depict “before and after” photos, and imply that if you use a particular product or service, you will transform from the “before” person to the “after” person.  Most often the fine print to these advertisements states, “Results not typical.  Actual results may vary.”  Under the old FTC guidelines, this type of disclaimer was usually acceptable—it isn't anymore.

Under the FTC's new guidelines, simply stating that a user might not have “similar results” is insufficient, because the disclaimer doesn’t disclose what the average user of the product or service will experience.  Instead, the advertisement must specifically state what the typical user will experience, or what most people will experience if they use the advertised product or service.

Advertisements that present endorsements by people that claim to be “actual customers” of a product or service must, in fact, be actual customers.  If the endorser is not an actual customer, then that fact needs to be clearly and conspicuously stated in the advertisement.

 

If an advertisement represents, directly or by implication, that the endorser is an expert with respect to the endorsement message, then the endorser must be an expert in the area in which he or she is speaking.  (In other words, if a car engineer is boasting about a particular car part, the engineer must be a car mechanic—not a chemist.)  Moreover, the expert must have examined the advertised product or service in order to support the endorser's conclusions in the endorsement.

 

If an advertiser pays a research company to do research, that fact must be disclosed in the advertisement.

 

Whenever there is a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product or service that might significantly affect the credibility of the endorsement, that connection must be disclosed.  For example, if a spokesperson is being paid to endorse a product, that fact must be disclosed.  Similarly, if a blog accepts free samples of a product from a manufacturer and subsequently promotes the product on the blog, that fact must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.

 

If you have any questions about whether your company's marketing strategy needs to be updated or brought into compliance with the FTC's new guidelines, or if you have any questions about the guidelines themselves, please contact me by email or directly at (954) 364-6044.