Advertising: Government Regulation

You cannot help admiring the astonishing outpouring of creativity that has gone into marketing and selling products for which people have no basic need. The enthusiasm of advertising professionals, however, has led them to go over the line more than once.

The first federal government effort to reign in deceptive labeling was passed into law in 1906 as the Pure Food and Drug Act. The 1912 Sherley Amendment broadened its reach by providing “that no package should make false or fraudulent claims pertaining to curative or therapeutic effects.” Although much of the legislation was aimed at the excesses of the patent medicine companies and the often-dubious ingredients in canned foods, companies of all kinds were hauled into court on account of their creative excesses. As late as 1951 the Federal Trade Commission threatened the advertisers of Postum coffee substitute with action if they did not stop running ads claiming that drinking actual coffee discouraged marriage or that it resulted in “divorces, business failures, factory accidents, juvenile delinquency, traffic accidents, fire or home foreclosures.”