Misleading Claims Are Ubiquitous In Our Society; More Policing Is Needed
“The Federal Trade Commission is putting hundreds of advertisers on notice that they should avoid deceiving consumers with advertisements that make product claims that cannot be backed up or substantiated. In notices sent to the companies, the FTC warned that it will not hesitate to use its authority to target violators with large civil penalties.”
The same warning could apply to some PR practitioners who only tell half the story to journalists about their client’s PR crisis but exaggerate the many new benefits of their client’s Pencil #10 that just replaced Pencil #9.
Of course, exaggeration claims are ubiquitous when individuals talk about their accomplishments, but that’s okay. Only the few people on the receiving end of the fibs might be affected. But when the exaggerator is a public figure, entity or company executive he/she should be punished, I believe, because those remarks can affect things like a person’s health, finances or future.
As a self-admitted skeptic, when a person exaggerates his or hers accomplishments to me I take it with a grain of salt. I’ve done so because during my days as a journalist at New York City dailies and wire services, before jumping the fence to public relations as news outlets failed, I knew that I was only being told one side of a story by PR people.
And I’m always skeptical of the claims made on TV commercials or by the overwhelming majority of public individuals, whether they are business executives, politicians or print and TV pundits. Also, during my long career in the PR business, whenever a top executive made a promise to me I always took it with the proverbial grain of salt.
While the FTC’s warming about TV commercials is welcome, there is another phase of misleading advertising that I believe they should look into – one that personally annoys me – deliberate product misinformation on packaging. In particular, I’m talking about two of my favorite snacks – Mallomars and Vienna Fingers and one not so favorite snack.
The packaging on both those delicious favorite snacks are misleading. The Mallomars inside the package are considerably smaller than the one pictured on the package. The same is true for the Vienna Fingers cookies. Also in big print, the packaging on Mallormars says “Pure Chocolate,” despite dozens of other ingredients in the cookie, including a “bioengineered food ingredient” that are listed in a much smaller font.
The pictures on both packages are considerably larger than the cookies in the packaging. And that is deliberately misleading and personally disappointing. (Healthwise, instead of being disappointed, I should be happy because cookies are not the healthiest snack foods available.)
In the Mallomars and Vienna Fingers situation, the products are much smaller than when I first started to enjoy them as a youngster, which means they are probably healthier for me.
Entering the “what you see on the package is not what is inside the package” is OREO chocolate sandwich cookies. A front page article in the November 13, Wall Street Journal detailed how devotees of the cookies claim that they now have less crème, which the manufacture of the cookies deny, but consumers insist it is so.
When I was an avid cookie eater in my youth, OREO was never my favorite cookie. But after reading the WSJ article I put on my investigative reporter’s sweet tooth hat and purchased a couple of packages.
As with the Mallomars and Vienna Fingers cookies, the packaging was misleading. The picture of an OREO on the packaging is about four times as large as the actual product. In addition to the picture of the OREO there is a considerable amount of text describing the ingredients, net weight and other information in easy to read fonts.
But a not so easy to read much smaller font on the side of the package says, “ENLARGED TO SHOW DETAIL,” reminiscent of the small fonts used by health products that read, “These claims have not been evaluated by the FTC.” And the only “enlarged detail” was a much larger than actual size cookie in what I think is supposed to be milk, because a much larger font than the disclaimer reads, “MILK’S FAVORITE COOKIE.” That was news to me. I didn’t know a glass of milk can talk, but after seeing all those TV commercials featuring talking animals, I guess anything is possible.
The Lesson For PR People
Claims made by PR people are watched more closely by beat reporters than those made by advertisers, who are policed by the FTC, FDA and SEC. But PR people should be aware that corporate and marketing claims in press releases can also be investigated by government agencies. So make certain that facts or quotes in your press releases are always truthful and can be backed up by actual facts, not alternative ones.
