In recent years, plaintiffs’ attorneys have found that filing website accessibility cases can be a lucrative business model. By doing a quick scan of a website and then copying and pasting from other complaints, these attorneys can file a complaint with minimal effort. Because the legal requirements in this area are murky and settling is
FDA Is Still Keeping Up With The Kardashians
When it comes to the legal side of working with influencers, smart companies focus on ensuring that influencers clearly disclose that they are working with the company. After all, that’s where regulators have focused most of their attention in recent years. But that’s not where a company’s obligations stop – companies also need to take
NAD Addresses Math Problems in Counting Reviews
Function claimed that it had “over 110,000 5-star product reviews” for its hair care products, the majority of which come from its “shampoo and conditioner” category. A competitor filed an NAD challenge pointing out that the total number of 5-star reviews across all product categories was only 63,831. So how did Function get to 110,000?
NAD Decision Suggests Expansive Definition of Advertising
As part of its routine monitoring program, NAD asked ACT to provide substantiation for statements the company made online about its standardized college entrance test. NAD was concerned about whether ACT sufficiently disclosed the likelihood of cancellations due to COVID-19 and statements about test center availability. The decision is interesting because it sheds light on
NAD Finds That Humor Doesn’t Always Indicate Puffery
The American Association of Orthodontists ran a series of social media ads for Happy Mouth Now, a fictional teledentistry company, which showed consumers struggling with the company’s products. The ads are funny, unless you work for a non-fictional teledentistry company, in which case you’d likely choose another adjective to describe them.
SmileDirectClub challenged the ads
NAD Releases Tips for Influencer Marketing
This week, NAD released five tips on influencer marketing. Here are the tips, followed by some of our own observations.
1. When working with influencers or incentivizing consumers to review your product, you may be responsible for the content of their posts.
As we’ve noted in the past, if you work with an influencer
CARU Previews Changes, Calls for Diversity in Ads
The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (or “CARU”) has guidelines that apply to ads directed to children who are under 12 years old. A lot has changed since the guidelines were last updated in 2006, and CARU recently announced that it’s working on an update. At ACI’s Advertising Claims Substantiation Forum this month, I asked Angela
Penn State Football’s Super Bowl Claims Flagged on Social Media
In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, Penn State Football tweeted a graphic claiming that “a Penn Stater has
appeared in every Super Bowl.” Below that bold claim, in much smaller letters, appeared an important qualifier: “Except for five since 1967.”
Competitors were quick to flag the claim, and many touted their own
FTC Closing Letter Addresses Management of Consumer Reviews
When the FTC decides not to pursue an investigation, it often issues a short closing letter to the company explaining why FTC staff decided not to recommend enforcement. The letters are just a few paragraphs long and don’t contain a lot of details, but if you read between the lines, you can often get some
New Court Decision Address Manipulation of Reviews
Because consumer reviews are so important in today’s marketplace, many companies go to great lengths to increase their number of favorable reviews. Sometimes, they go too far. We’ve written about FTC and NAD cases in which companies incentivized reviews without proper disclosures and even about cases in which companies solicited fake reviews. (Click here,