Media advertising is an industry with a high level of competition among advertisers. Needless to say that advertisers are ready to use any means of promotion in order to increase product sales. This results in the usage of unfair methods of promotions, and that is why the government must regulate advertising strategies in order to protect customers, especially those of young age.
The most important aspect the government must regulate is the credibility of the facts provided by advertisers. Although there are many strategies for forcing the customer to buy a specific product, the most popular one is to convince the customer that this particular product is exactly what one needs (Antoniou, 2021). For example, Dannon’s Activia advertisement, which claimed that the yogurt had “special bacterial ingredients,” ended with a scandal because these claims were fake (Antoniou, 2021). Therefore, the government should regulate the integrity of the advertisement’s information to protect the customer from being deceived, making misleading advertising illegal.
It is essential to draw the line between fallacies and complete deception of the viewer, which can even harm one’s health; direct deception provides fake information about the product. An excellent example of an entirely misleading advertisement is the Proactive media campaign with Kendall Jenner (Roberts, 2019). They promoted Proactif as the supreme medicine to treat acne; Jenner claimed that the mentioned gel helped her keep facial skin clean (Roberts, 2019). In reality, her skincare routine did not even include this medicine and contained much stronger products (Roberts, 2019). Children are less likely to question the advertiser’s authority; therefore, advertisers have already been forbidden to directly mislead the child fraction of the audience (Handsley & Duke, 2019). However, they are still able to keep some information back. For example, a child buys a toy that requires a device not included in the basic toy set. This way, the advertiser forces a child or his parents to buy additional products from the same company, increasing its income. Therefore, the fully misleading information may harm the customer, while the fallacy most likely will only force one to spend more money on the product.
References
Antoniou A. (2021). Place it so it’s hard to miss: Advertising regulation and transparency in influencers’ endorsements on social media. Communications Law – Journal of Computer, Media and Telecommunications Law, 26(4). 190 – 207.
Handsley, E., & Duke, A. (2019). Protecting the child consumer from misleading advertising: A comparison of media regulation and consumer protection approaches. Competition and Consumer Law Journal, 26(3) 238-262.
Roberts, A.J. (2019). False influencing. Georgetown Law Journal, 109(1) 1-64.