FTC kicks publicist’s ass for ordinary sales puffery.

by dangerbrown on August 29, 2010

The FTC just decided to kick a small USA based business woman’s ass because she was providing ordinary publicity work paid reviews for clients with wares to sell.

The defendant victim was using ordinary sales puffery. If you are unfamiliar with the term; it refers to a legal concept that salespeople may make positive statements about their products that are exaggerations of the truth. It’s inspired by the ancient belief in caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). Customers expect, and commerce requires salespeople to be able to puff up their own products. Outright lies of course shouldn’t be tolerated.

If the following statements were made in a commercial on TV, Radio, or printed media, they would have garnered no attention.  These are the statements made by the victim Tracie Snitker’s company Reverb Communications Inc.’s employees:

“Amazing new game”
“ONE of the BEST”
“[Developer of gaming application being reviewed] hits another home run with
[gaming application being reviewed]”
“Really Cool Game”
“GREAT, family-friendly board game app”
“One of the best apps just got better” and
“[Developer of gaming application being reviewed] does it again!”
Sounds like pretty mild stuff if you ask me. It’s not like they’re claiming it cures cancer. C’mon FTC! Do you really want to drive more jobs overseas and give American companies such a disadvantage in the global marketplace? Time for publicity firms to move to Panama. You better start packing your bags if you want to stay in business.

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