International Law

Fighting Manipulative Ads

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Noah Goldstein has a neat observation about how to deal with manipulative ads, something that the FTC should pay attention to.

"Several years prior to the cigarette ban, the Federal Communications Commission had enacted the "fairness doctrine," which ordered radio stations and television networks that broadcasted controversial messages of public importance to also provide free air time to those with opposing views.

Anti-tobacco groups capitalized on this ruling by initiating an ad campaign that provided viewers with effective counterarguments that refuted each supposed benefit of cigarettes "demonstrated" in Big Tobacco's commercials.

A major reason why these anti-tobacco commercials were so potent was that these ads included recognizable features of the original ads, such as characters, settings, themes, and slogans that had been appearing in cigarette ads at the time.

For instance, one commercial featured a Marlboro Man-like cowboy smoking a cigarette in a saloon. When he encounters a rival cowboy and attempts to draw his weapon, he starts wheezing, coughing, and gasping for air. The narrator gravely says, "Cigarettes - they're killers."

After viewing counter-ads such as these, those who later viewed other cigarette advertisements-particularly ones featuring the Marlboro man or cowboy scenery-immediately conjured up the counterarguments, increasing their resistance to the cigarette ads' message.

Counter-advertisements such as these proved to be enormously successful; per capita cigarette consumption dropped almost 10 percent in the following three years, most of which has been attributed to the counter-ads.

It's not so surprising then, that the industry's leaders decided it would be more profitable to reallocate their advertising budgets to the types of media that the fairness doctrine didn't apply, such as billboards and print ads."

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).