For those of you who are not familiar with the term, advertising is an act that is meant to persuade people to take action, usually to buy and consume the products or services that a company offers. In a way, advertising is quite similar to campaigns.
For obvious reasons, advertising is integral to any business. Without the use of advertisements, it would be nearly impossible for a company to reach its sales goals, let alone achieve high levels of success.
Successful advertising is difficult to achieve as it requires a lot of resources (time, effort, and of course, money) in order to develop a unique and compelling advertising strategy and properly execute it.
Some companies choose to deliberately cut corners in order to gain a competitive edge without using any significant amount of resources. They do this by ignoring the truth and making false claims about their products or services.
Such false claims are referred to as false advertising, which can be defined as promotional marketing that manipulates actual information about products, such as their characteristics and quality, to change consumers’ perceptions of the products they offer.
False advertising is considered illegal, even if it was made by mistake. According to the law, consumers have the right to know what they are buying. Because of this, any and all fraudulent information that was spread in order to misguide consumers into purchasing a product is considered an offence that is punishable by law.
False advertising can result in major scandals that are sure to have a negative impact on the company, from negative publicity to bankruptcy, to destabilizing the economy.
Types of False Advertising
Companies nowadays use all kinds of different tactics in order to exploit consumers into buying their products. The following are the most common types of false advertising that companies often use to increase their consumers:
1. Misleading illustrations
Nowadays, this type of false advertising can be found almost everywhere. Using techniques such as photo manipulation, companies can beautify the appearance of their products on their advertisements to make them look more enticing to the eyes of consumers. Here are a few examples:
- Food advertisements may show the products larger than in reality
- A drink company may use photo manipulation to enhance the coloring of fruits on its drinks packaging to give the impression of freshness and authenticity
Food or cookbook companies often hire food artists to “design” their food in order to make it look visually more appealing. The following video is a great example that shows how food artists use dangerous, inedible products to replace actual ingredients just for the sake of making the food look as delicious as possible. As shown in the thumbnail, glue is applied to give the impression of the pizza having mozzarella filling.
Side note: not all food artists use dangerous stuff like this
For good business practice, when making packaging for a product, you should add a “serving suggestion” disclaimer on the packaging to help your company to avoid legal issues.
2. Bait and switch
When a company advertises a product (or service) with no intent to sell or even provide it to customers, it does the classic bait and switch. When customers are lured into their place, the staff will claim that the product have been sold out, then they try to sell them another, more expensive product that the customers didn’t even have the intention of buying in the first place. This effect is quite strong as it has the potential to pressure the customers into feeling guilty for going home empty-handed.
3. Origin deception
Companies often make false claims about the origin of their products. One common example is food companies claiming their food products are homemade and made out of fresh and healthy ingredients, but in reality, they consist of synthetic ingredients and were mass-produced in factories. Similarly, international clothing companies often does this as well, selling products with “Made in USA” tags, but in reality, they were all made locally.
Unfortunately these companies tend to get away from lawsuits due to the fact that these kinds of information are quite difficult to verify.
4. Pricing-based deception
This occurs when a company charges additional fees that were not previously disclosed in the advertisement to the consumers. These businesses include surcharges that are intentionally hidden so that the customer will miss it. There are many kinds of business that might practice this kind of false advertising, such as gym memberships, credit cards, and mobile service providers, just to name a few.
5. Price reduction deception
This type of false advertising occurs when a company provides misleading information about the price of a product or service that it offers to the consumers. For example, a product is advertised to be sold 10 dollars after a 50% discount, though its original price is 10 dollars. This makes the customers think that the original price was 20 dollars instead of 10 dollars, making them assuming that it is a great deal, even though they paid the original cost for the product.
6. Inconsistent comparison
This false advertising occurs when a company compares its products or services with others by highlighting its superiority over its competitors’ while completely neglecting the competitors’ superiority over its own product. Because of this, consumers will believe the advertisement and will be falsely lured into buying said product.
Legal Advertising
Creating lawful advertisements for your business may help it grow by gaining loyal customers, they will trust you because they get exactly what they were advertised. While there are no right or wrong ways to determine whether an advertisement is legal or not, you should always give your best effort to keep your advertisements as honest as possible. Here are a few notes to keep in mind when you are trying to make an advertisement for your products or services:
- Have an accurate and realistic representation of the product or service that you offer, through either descriptions or illustrations
- Treat all your competitors fairly
- Be upfront, truthful, and consistent about pricing
- Use the word “free” cautiously
- Keep a generous supply of the advertised products
Conclusion
Advertising is a very essential part in your business as it helps you to reach and engage your consumers, providing them with relevant information about your products or services so that they will be interested in buying and consuming them. However, you must always be honest in making advertisements for your products. Do not use false advertisements as a last ditch effort to exploit innocent customers. It is both illegal and morally wrong to do so.
I hope you can learn something from this article. If you find this article useful, consider giving it a clap or sharing it to your friends and family members!
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