Advertising Reflection

When it comes to advertising, it is very easy to blur the lines between legal and ethical. There are so many terms to refer to how this can be done or to refer to any type of advertising or commercial speech statement. With commercial speech and advertising, it’s important to remember that any and all claims require substantiation. Therefore, if you claim, “our toothpaste makes your teeth whiter”, you must provide substantiation, or proof, that your toothpaste does actually make peoples’ teeth whiter. This means avoiding “puffery” statements, which are vague evaluations that cannot be proven true or false (best burger ever) and hyperbole and/or exaggeration, without reasonable belief. There are four sources of law when it comes to advertising: constitutional (judiciary), common (judiciary), statutory (legislative), and administrative (executive – which involves the FTC and FDA). This is also where FDI – first deceptive and illegal – comes into play. Forms of advertising are considered deceptive if they have (1) a representation or omission likely to mislead, (2) a reasonable person, (3) who relied on the information. This plays in with trademark and how it’s important to make sure all claims are clearly distinguished in ways that match FTC and FDA guidelines. Therefore, they match the four P’s of clear and conspicuous disclosures: prominence (is it big enough for consumers to notice and read?), presentation (is wording and format easy for consumers to understand?), placement (is it where consumers will look?), and proximity (is it close to the claim it qualifies?).

When going about the advertising process, it is so important to analyze all aspects of what you are promoting and make sure all of your claims and other information being releases matches the truth of your product and has no deceptive aspects. When working on my mystery product campaign for my colorful rocket ship vape, I realized how many little details there are to consider, especially depending on the product category. As we were working to promote and advertise a nicotine product, Taylor and I had to read heavily into the FTC and FDA advertising laws to see how and where we were allowed to promote. There are so many laws around vaping products. For example, we are only able to promote in Facebook groups, Reddit threads, vaping magazines, and through brand ambassadors on social media platforms like YouTube or Instagram. We also had to make sure our health claims were a certain size and font in a 3-4mm white box to ensure we clearly established any health problems that could come from the vape. Personally, the mystery product campaign taught me so much about advertising and how much goes into it depending on what type of product you are marketing. Before the project, I never knew how much stricter certain types of product advertisements were compared to others. I feel like the mystery product was a fun and interesting way to teach us about the varying types of laws around products. Overall, I enjoyed watching the presentations and seeing products that were so different from ours and the different laws they had to follow when marketing or advertising their products.