Untruth in advertising

Listerine made itself a household name by marketing itself as a cure for female loneliness. 

"Edna's case was really a pathetic one," a 1920s ad read. "Like every woman, her primary ambition was to marry.” And yet, “as her birthdays crept gradually toward that tragic thirty mark, marriage seemed farther from her life than ever.”

Edna, they tell us, was graceful, charming, and lovely. So what was keeping her from the altar? Her breath. She suffered from halitosis — an archaic term that Listerine’s ad team elevated to the status of medical condition.

Tragically, there was no way for her to know. “That’s the insidious thing about halitosis (unpleasant breath). You, yourself, rarely know when you have it. And even your closest friends won’t tell you.”

An estimated one-third of women suffered from unpleasant breath, the ads reported. And since no alar-aspiring woman could be sure she wasn’t among them, they would all have to use Listerine.

The logic worked. Listerine sales rose from $100,000 in 1921 to over $4,000,000 in 1927.

Of course, an ad like that could never run these days. The unsubstantiated claims it makes would be in contravention of the FTC’s rules on misleading advertising. 

(There may be additional reasons, but none sprint immediately to mind.)

For their alarming estimate of how many women suffered from halitosis, the ads cited a survey of 68 hairdressers. For their claim that Listerine is “at least four times more effective in stopping bad breath odors,” they cited “recent tests.”

That was evidence enough at the time. The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 mandated the FTC only to prevent "unfair methods of competition" among businesses. The authority to protect consumers came later with the Wheeler-Lea Act of 1938, which added a clause to the FTC Act stating that "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce are hereby declared unlawful."

The FTC has been busy ever since.

The greatest hits

Rapid Shave shaving cream 

In 1965, the FTC sued Colgate Palmolive for television ads demonstrating that Rapid Shave shaving cream sufficiently softened a piece of sandpaper that a razor could shave it clean in a single pass. 

But the sandpaper wasn’t sandpaper. It was plexiglass covered in sand. So the FTC filed a complaint against Colgate ordering them to pull the ad.

Colgate took its defense all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against them: "The misrepresentation of any fact, so long as it materially induces a purchaser's decision to buy, is a deception prohibited by [the FTC Act]."

There was no monetary penalty for Colgate, just an order to comply. But the FTC’s power to police misleading ads was confirmed.

Listerine

In 1975, Listerine was finally taken to task by the FTC, this time for claims that the mouth wash had medicinal qualities that cured colds and sore throats. There was no scientific evidence that it could, so the FTC ordered the maker of Listerine to run $10 million in corrective ads clarifying that it “will not help prevent colds or sore throats."

They challenged the ruling, but the Supreme Court declined to review the case, endorsing the FTC’s authority to mandate corrective advertising.

Wonder Bread 

In 2002, the FTC filed a complaint against Interstate Bakeries Corporation for ads featuring Professor Wonder, who claimed that the enhanced calcium content of Wonder Bread would significantly improve a child's memory and brain function.

“The brain instructs the body on what to do,” the ads helpfully explained.

In one ad, the Professor looks into a child’s brain and sees "tired neurons that have obviously not gotten enough calcium." After a bite of a Wonder Bread sandwich, however, the child’s brain is buzzing with "lively, active neurons."

Professor Wonder, it turns out, was not an expert on children’s brains. Nor could Interstate Bakeries cite any actual experts in support of their claims.

They settled with the FTC and agreed to refrain from making any further health claims without evidence to support them.

Skechers Shape-ups

In 2012, the FTC filed a complaint against Skechers USA for “making unfounded claims that Shape-ups would help people lose weight and strengthen and tone their buttocks.”

The agency found that the research Skechers cited to support those claims wasn’t exactly rigorous: the lead author was married to a Skechers marketing executive and the study’s participants included members of the researcher’s family and staff. 

And yet, they still had to fake the data. In some cases, weight gain was recorded as weight loss. In another, weight loss in the control group was credited to the test group. Claims of “71% glute activation” and “13.2% calorie burn” came from a single subject on a single day.

When Skechers settled the complaint (for $40 million), the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection had this to say: “The FTC’s message, for Skechers and other national advertisers, is to shape up your substantiation or tone down your claims.”

(See what he did there? Regulators can be funny, too.)

Not everyone seemed to get the message. In 2024 alone, the FTC ordered companies to return $337 million to consumers to atone for misleading ads.

(See what I did there?)

The latest candidate for atonement is Polymarket.

Poiymarket.com

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Polymarket has been promoting its service by paying people to post videos of themselves winning big.

Unfortunately, the winning was faked.

— Byron Gilliam