Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e- Advertising and Sales
Promotion
Text © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2002474 Chapter 16
When the FTC found fewer outright deceptive ads in national campaigns, the
agency moved more aggressively against what it felt to be other “unfair” practices.
Some in the FTC felt it was unfair to target advertising at children. And there were
questions about whether food and drug advertising should be controlled to protect
vulnerable groups, such as the aged, poor, or less-educated.
Not everyone agreed with this thrust, however. Congress specifically limits FTC
rule-making to advertising that is deceptiverather than unfair.Note, however, that
while the FTC is prohibited from using unfairness in a rule affecting a whole indus-
try, unfairness can still be used against an individual company. For example, if RJR
had not yielded to public and government pressure to drop its Joe Camel cigarette
campaign, it might have faced charges that the comic character was part of an unfair
effort to appeal to underage teens.^30What constitutes unfair and deceptive advertising is a difficult question and one
marketing managers will have to wrestle with for years. Sometimes the law provides
guidelines, but in most cases the marketing manager must make personal judgments
as well. The social and political environment is changing worldwide. Practices con-
sidered acceptable some years ago are now questioned or considered deceptive.
Saying or even implying that your product is best may be viewed as deceptive. And
a 1988 revision of the Lanham Act protects firms whose brand names are unfairly
tarnished in comparative ads.Companies get no clear guidelines about how much research support they need
to back up their ad claims. Unfortunately, there are many ways to lie with statis-
tics, and unethical and/or desperate advertisers of me-too products try many of them.
It only takes one such competitor in an industry to cause major shifts in market
share and affect the nature of competition in that market. As an old cliché says:
One bad apple can spoil a whole barrel.^31
It’s really not hard to figure out how to avoid criticisms of being unfair and decep-
tive. A little puffing is acceptable—and probably always will be. But firms need to
put a stop to the typical production-oriented approach of trying to use advertising
to differentiate me-too products that are not different and don’t offer customers
better value.What is unfair or
deceptive is changing
Supporting ad claims is
a fuzzy area
The nature of sales
promotion
Sales promotionrefers to those promotion activities—other than advertising,
publicity, and personal selling—that stimulate interest, trial, or purchase by final
customers or others in the channel. Exhibit 14-2 shows examples of typical sales pro-
motions targeted at final customers, channel members, or a firm’s own employees.
Sales promotion is generally used to complement the other promotion methods.
While advertising campaigns and sales force strategy decisions tend to have longer-
term effects, a particular sales promotion activity usually lasts for only a limited time
period. But sales promotion can often be implemented quickly and get sales results
sooner than advertising. Further, sales promotion objectives usually focus on prompt-
ing some short-term action. For a middleman, such an action might be a decision
to stock a product, provide a special display space, or give the product special
emphasis in selling efforts to final customers. For a consumer, the desired action
might be to try a new product, switch from another brand, buy more of a product,
or perhaps buy earlier than would otherwise be the case. The desired action by an
employee might be a special effort to satisfy customers or more emphasis on selling
a certain product.Sales Promotion: Do Something Different to Stimulate Change