Today I was looking through a lot of complaints on the ASC website and I was surprised to see how many complaints were pertaining to clause 1. For those who may not know, clause 1 refers to the truthfulness and accuracy of an ad's message. According to the ASC, for an ad to comply with this clause, advertisers must consider the following:
"(a) Advertisements must not contain inaccurate, deceptive or otherwise misleading claims, statements, illustrations or representations, either direct or implied, with regard to any identified or identifiable product or service.
(b) Advertisements must not omit relevant information in a manner that, in the result, is deceptive.
(c) All pertinent details of an advertised offer must be clearly and understandably stated.
(d) Disclaimers and asterisked or footnoted information must not contradict more prominent aspects of the message and should be located and presented in such a manner as to be clearly visible and/or audible.
(e) Both in principle and practice, all advertising claims and representations must be supportable. If the support on which an advertised claim or representation depends is test or survey data, such data must be reasonably competent and reliable, reflecting accepted principles of research design and execution that characterize the current state of the art. At the same time, however, such research should be economically and technically feasible, with due recognition of the various costs of doing business.
(f) The advertiser must be clearly identified in an advocacy advertisement."
Most of the complaints were about ads in flyers, all of them generally about a price not actually being what was advertised. However I was able to find a few complaints that were for TV ads that had nothing to do with price. A few were about the disclaimers. Advertisers must always make sure to have accurate and truthful disclaimers as well as ensure that they are large enough for the viewer to read.
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