Advertising Age reminds its readers of “Nine Things You Can’t Do in Advertising if You Want to Stay on the Right Side of the Law,” which turns into a reminder that there’s a legal distinction between puffery and a false claim. (Summary: Lie and the government will smack you down. BS all you want.)
The AdAge piece provides multiple examples of ads that meet (and fail to meet) requirements of the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau, and notes that failure to follow the division’s rulings “can result in government action.”
Nowhere in the article do you find the word “ethics,” which suggests to us that just because something like puffery is legal doesn’t mean it’s necessarily ethical.
Questions:
- How does this topic tie into the questions “Why not follow the rules?” (from Chapter 2) and “What’s it worth?” (from Chapters 7 and 9).
- Chapter 7 of Doing Ethics in Media looks at puffery under the context of the correspondence theory of truth ( p. 209). Why? What theory of truth can best handle the idea of puffery as an ethical form of influence?
- If you were in charge of regulating advertising, would you add tighter restrictions on puffery, loosen restrictions, or keep it about the same? Why?
- If you believe that puffery is fine for advertising, then should it be fine for other forms of communication, such as journalism? Why or why not?