Olympic Advertising Police Scour London for Rogue Ads (Advertising Law News & Analysis - July 19, 2012)

Edited by Jeffrey D. Knowles , Roger Colaizzi , Gary D. Hailey and Gregory J. Sater Olympic Advertising Police Scour London for Rogue Ads

According to a story published by UK newspaper The Independent, hundreds of uniformed officers began scouring the streets of London this week, on the hunt for ambush marketing activities and advertisements by companies seeking to leverage the Olympic brand without being official sponsors. Under special brand protection legislation passed for the games, the agents have the power to enter shops or offices and bring legal action against companies violating the law.

Although many of the words whose use in advertisements is regulated seem obvious, such as "Olympic" and "medals," others, such as "London," "summer" and "sponsors," are much more mundane, causing some to question the breadth of the legislation.

Please see the Analysis section, below, for a related article on Olympic advertising.

Click here to read the story in The Independent.

NAD Decision Pins Down Nutrisystem on Social Media Testimonials

Recently, the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus – an industry self-regulatory body that reviews national advertising for truthfulness, accuracy, and substantiation – found that consumer weight loss stories posted to the social networking site Pinterest by Nutrisystem, Inc. required additional disclosures to avoid misleading consumers.

At issue were testimonials posted to one of the company's "pinboards" on the social networking site. The pinboard, titled "Real Customers. Real Success." featured photographs of Nutrisystem customers with each customer's name, total weight loss, and a link to the Nutrisystem website appearing below each photo. The NAD determined that the "pins" touted weight loss results that were atypical for Nutrisystem customers and thus should be qualified with a disclosure of the results consumers can expect to achieve using Nutrisystem's weight loss program, in accordance with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for consumer testimonials.

Nutrisystem informed the NAD that the typical results disclosures were inadvertently omitted from the pinboard, the pins had appeared on Pinterest for less than two months, and the typicality disclosures were added immediately upon receipt of the NAD's letter inquiring into the weight loss "pins." The disclosure that Nutrisystem posted reads, "Results not typical. On Nutrisystem®, you can expect to lose at...