Role of Advertising

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Rules of Advertising

1. Advertising should be designed as to conform not only to the laws but not also to the moral and aesthetic sentiments of the country in which it is published.

2. No advertisement likely to bring advertising into contempt or disrepute should be permitted. Advertising should not take advantage of the superstition or credulity of the general public.

3. Advertising should tell the truth and avoid distorting facts and misleading by means of implication and omissions. For instance it should not mislead the consumer by false statements as to:

• The character of the merchandise – i.e.: its utility, material, ingredients, origin.

• The price of the merchandise or its value, its suitable or the terms of the purchase.


• The service, accompanying purchase, including delivery exchange, return, repair, upkeep.

• Personal recommendations of the article or service. Testimonials which are fictitious or the originals of which
cannot be produced must not be used. Anyone using testimonials in advertisements is as responsible for the
statements made in them as he would be if he had made them himself.

• The equality of the value of competing goods or the trustworthiness of statements made by others.

4. No advertisement should be permitted to contain any claim so exaggerated as to lead inevitably to
disappoint in the mind of the consumer. Special care is called for in the case of:

• Advertisement addressed to those suffering from illness.

• No such advertisements should hold out the promise of cure for serious disease nor contain any statement

calculated to injure the health of the sufferer by dissuading him or her from seeking a medical advice or otherwise.

• Advertisements inviting the public to invest money should not contain statements which may mislead the public in respect of the security offered, rates of return or terms of amortization.

• Advertisements inviting the public to take part in lotteries or competitions with prize or which hold out the
prospect of gifts.

Such advertisements should state clearly all the conditions for the lottery or competition or the conditions for the
distribution of the gifts.

Virtually every product is puffed up. Terms like “The Best” or “The Greatest” were sales talk. Everyone knows that
“Wonder Bread” is not really a wonder, and “The Greatest show on Earth” is not what everyone considers the
greatest. Puffery, therefore, was a form of opinion statement and not regulated. Some observers have expressed
concern that the “Puffery defense” was a loophole through which many deceptive claims fell. The commission has
been criticized for allowing deceptive claims to clip through under the guise of puffery.


Puffery can be defined as:

1. Reasonable people do not believe to be true product qualities and

2. Incapable of being proved either true or false
Consequently, if deception is the creation of a false belief about the product in the mind of a consumer, claims
that fall into the definition of puffery cannot be deceptive. By definition such claims can be neither false nor can

they create belief.

Puffery has generally viewed as a form of poetic license. Consumers are aware of the exaggeration and do not
believe it. Some argue that puffery has a detrimental effect on consumers’ purchase decisions and that should be
illegal.
 
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