Deception by TV Advertisers

Everyone knows that television advertising is designed to persuade the viewer to buy a given product. We are also all aware that television ads are, therefore, not likely to tell us the whole truth about the product in question. What many of us may not be aware of, however, are the increasingly sophisticated techniques with which advertisers now manipulate the television audience, and the extent to which advertisers are allowed to present misleading or unfounded product information. Deception by television advertisers and their manipulation of viewers' fears, desires, and even values are the topics which will be examined in depth in this paper.

In this age of deregulation, when broadcasters are free to bombard the audience with as many commercials as it will tolerate, it is not surprising that advertisers can get away with lying by omission or implication. A recent study of 1000 television commercials showed that 74 percent of advertisers claim that their brand is superior to all others. Of these claims, fully 58 percent are wholly unsubstantiated. In the advertising world, these unsupported claims of a product being the "best" or "finest" are euphemistically labelled "harmless puffery", and it seems that the Federal Trade Commission concurs since it has placed no restrictions on such claims.

Puffery is advertising's most commonly used fraudulent practice, but subtle misdirection and lying by omission is running a very close second. For example, a commercial for

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hort spots. The main effects of the 15 second ads has been to increase the total number of commercials aired by 20 percent, and to make the use of attention-grabbing sight and sound gimmicks even more important. The program-length commercials began in 1983 and are becoming more common on small cable and independent stations, particularly in the hard-to-sell late night and weekend hours. The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on some of these advertisements because they might be mistaken for regular programming. Generally, stations will run disclaimers at the beginning and at intervals during the broadcast, but the FTC says that in some cases that is not enough. For example, the FTC recently ruled that a show entitled "Consumer Challenge" failed to inform the viewers that the panel of guest "experts" were actually just actors in the commercial: the program has been taken off the air to be revised. Charges of stereotyping in advertising have been made for many years now, and advertisers are the first to admit the value they place on stereotypes. In fact, many of them pay a great deal of money for stereotyped profiles of their target audiences. This new advertising trend is a modified version of demographics called "ps

Category: Business - D