Promoting Self-Policing

Surveys show that there is a growing skepticism on the part of the public about all advertising. This comes from fraud and deception, overexaggeration, puffery and insinuation. We think it's time to improve the climate in which advertising works. --Victor Elting, Chairman, National Advertising Advisory Committee

Advertisers have been engaged in a business in which there has been virtually no regulation. For the 50 years of the Federal Trade Commission's existence, they've had a free ride. We intend to change that.

--Robert Pitofsky, Chief, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection

If nothing else, admen and their increasingly vocal critics agree on one thing: the need to upgrade the methods of mass persuasion that sell the nation's products. Powerful critics in and out of Government are bent on forcing tough reforms. The Federal Trade Commission in particular has been working inventively to root out deceptive ads. In a variety of actions it has challenged some advertising of giant companies including Coca-Cola, ITT, Continental Baking, Standard Oil of California, Du Pont, Mattel and MacDonald's hamburger chain. In response, ad agencies and their clients are now taking their most serious step yet toward self-regulation.

The instrument for change will be the National, Advertising Review Board, which is being formed by the major advertising trade associations in cooperation with the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The review board, expected to be operating by fall, will consist of 50 members representing advertising agencies, industry and the public. B.B.B. offices around the country will accept complaints about national print or broadcast ads, and a Manhattan-based staff of ad specialists will monitor promotions. If an advertiser ignores the complaints, the matter will go to the review board, which will then 1) determine whether the complaint is justified, and, if so, 2) try to persuade the advertiser to correct or drop the offensive ad. Failing this, the board will publish its findings and turn the complaint over to the FTC or some other federal regulatory agency, the FDA, perhaps, or the Justice Department. Victor Elting, chairman of the National Advertising Advisory Committee--a group of top agency people and their clients, who are setting up the program--thinks that the review board will be able to move swiftly against misleading ads. Initially, the program will concern itself with distortions of fact. "But ultimately," says Elting, "it will move into broader areas, possibly involving taste."

Facts and Fear. The board should also provide much needed guidance for advertising men who have become increasingly fearful and uncertain under the onslaught of criticism. In a much publicized account switch six months ago, Wells Rich Greene won Alka-Seltzer's billings away from Doyle Dane Bernbach. The new campaign has yet to appear, partly because of time spent trying to anticipate the Government's reaction. "All agencies are weighing their product claims a lot more carefully today," says Adman Victor Bloede, chairman of Benton & Bowles.

For all its strengths, the self-policing program has some serious shortcomings. Though advertisers seem willing to finance the board at present (they have already contributed the $1.5 million needed to start the project), there is some question whether business will continue to fund a program that could hobble its promotion schemes. The board's close association with the moribund Better Business Bureaus is another drawback. Still, most admen genuinely want the review board to succeed; it could be a chance to avert stringent Government supervision.

Less Permissiveness. The new board is not likely to appease advertising's critics immediately. But FTC officials say they have no intention of curtailing their own assault on misleading promotions. That drive is being led by Miles W. Kirkpatrick, a lawyer whom President Nixon picked as FTC chairman, and Robert Pitofsky, a former New York University law professor, who in November was selected by Kirkpatrick to be chief of the commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. Under them, the climate of permissiveness in which advertising once operated has evaporated. Regulations against deceptive claims are no longer solely enforced by cease-and-desist orders, which amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist. The FTC has developed a tough new principle of "corrective advertising." This requires that instead of merely discontinuing a deceptive promotion, the advertiser must also run a series of ads admitting the deceptions.

In the past year, the FTC has issued almost a dozen "proposed orders" calling for corrective advertising. Most of the advertisers involved in these cases are discussing them privately with commission lawyers. So far no company has actually been forced to admit deceptions, and because of the legal resources open to advertisers, the proposed orders probably will not be enforceable for some time. Meanwhile, commission officials hope that the publicity generated by these orders will deter further excesses.

The biggest jolt yet for advertisers was the FTC's recent complaint against Continental Baking Co.'s Wonder Bread ads. The commission's position: by emphasizing Wonder Bread's nutritive values, the company was implying its product was unique, although most enriched loaves have the same nutritive value. That notion has broad implications. If applied to other products, it could markedly diminish the hyperbole used to sell a wide range of nondistinctive products like aspirin and liquid chlorine bleach. Because sales of so many items that cram store shelves depend on spurious claims of uniqueness, some products might have to be withdrawn. Argues Pitofsky: "If the product has nothing going for it but its advertising, if it is just a figment of its advertising manager's imagination, I see no reason for its continued existence."

Many admen predict disaster if the FTC's proposed restrictions are not handled with care. Writing in Advertising Age, Alan H. Meyer, associate creative director of Lennen & Newell's Dallas division, offers these extreme but fetching examples of ads trying to comply with the commission's wishes:

"Only Fina Gasoline in all the world is spelled F-I-N-A."

"Only Bayer Aspirin comes in the Bayer Aspirin package."

"Mrs. Baird's Bread is baked fresh, almost every day."

"The money you borrow from First National Bank is made by the United States Government, for the most part."

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