Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ADVERTISING NEWS: Comcast succeeds in challenge of DirecTV’s Rob Lowe ads, (Apr 9, 2015)

By Jody Coultas, J.D.

DirecTV, LLC’s commercials featuring actor Rob Lowe and various alter-egos were found to be misleading by the National Advertising Division (NAD). Comcast Cable Communications, LLC contended that DirecTV’s advertising campaign, starring Rob Lowe, misled consumers about features of DirecTV and made untruthful claims that DirecTV was superior to cable.

The commercials featured actor Rob Lowe stating that he has DirecTV and various alter-egos, including “Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe,” “Creepy Rob Lowe,” “Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe,” among others, that stated they have cable.

Although humor can be an effective and creative way for advertisers to highlight the differences between their products and their competitor’s, humor and hyperbole do not relieve an advertiser of the obligation to support messages that their advertisements might reasonably convey – especially if the advertising disparages a competitor’s product, said the NAD.

A reasonable takeaway from the “Creepy Rob Lowe” commercial was that DirecTV had better signal reliability than cable, but DirecTV did not provide any evidence to support that claim. The “Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe Commercial” conveyed the unsupported message that DirecTV had shorter customer service wait times than cable. The “Far Less Attractive Rob Lowe” commercial made an implied claim that DirecTV has better picture and sound quality than cable, but DirecTV also failed to present evidence to support this claim.

DirecTV’s “Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe” commercial claim that DirecTV was the “undisputed leader in sports” when combined with claims related to specific attributes about DirecTV’s sports programming was not puffery, but implied the unsupported claim that DirecTV’s sports programming was superior to cable’s sports programming. Also, consumers could reasonably believe that the price promoted at the end included the sports package, which was the entire focus of the advertisement. Because the introductory pricing displayed did not include any sports programming, NAD found the commercial misleading.

The line “Don’t be like this me. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV,” when used in the context of comparing attributes of DirecTV to attributes of cable, reasonably conveyed a comparative and unsupported superiority message.

DirecTV, LLC’s testing substantiated its 99% signal reliability claim and its “up to 1080p” picture quality claims, but NAD recommended that DirecTV modify the claim to clearly and conspicuously disclose the limited programming on which resolutions of 1080p is currently available.

NAD also recommended that DirecTV modify the claims “rated #1 claim” and DirecTV has been “ranked higher than cable for over ten years” to disclose that no other cable provider was ranked higher than DirecTV and that the rating was based on customer ratings of their own service provider.

DIRECTV plans to appeal NAD’s decision to the National Advertising Relations Board.

News: Advertising