COMPETITION COUNCIL PRESENTS SEMINARS CREATIVE ADVERTISING: IS IT ALWAYS MISLEADING?

A big part of association members and company employees are indirectly involved in advertising on a daily basis. They are led by a heartfelt wish to create the most effective advertisement for the best product. Lost in the excitement of creating, they seldom think about the provisions of the Law on Advertising.

The Council‘s experts have prepared several documents to facilitate the assessment of advertisements and continues seminar series launched in 2013.

Erika Lukšė, the Head of Unfair Commercial Practices Division, will discuss the ways to remain creative without breaching the laws concerned with advertising. She will also introduce real examples from the Competition Council‘s (the Council) practice and answer the questions.

In 2013, the Council presented the Guidelines on Assessment of Misleading and Unlawful Comparative Advertising (the Guidelines). The Guidelines lay down major criteria applied in the assessment of advertising.  Traders, advertising practitioners and other parties in advertising are advised to use the aforementioned criteria for assessing whether their advertisement is not misleading. The document includes a number of examples from the Council’s practice and court cases and summarizes  information from the Law on Advertising, Law on Prohibition of Unfair Business-to-Consumers Commercial Practices, Law on Competition as well as provisions of the European Union directives, practices of courts and other sources. The Guidelines also clearly outline the wording to be avoided in advertising.

Together with the Guidelines the Council’s experts prepared a brief note wherein the most important criteria for advertising assessment, permitted and prohibited claims and other relevant information is presented in a concise and precise manner.