Best Soup Ever? Suits Over Ads Demand Proof

Usually, The Lanham Act gives consumers the right to file lawsuits against companies that create false or misleading advertisements. Recently, however, there has been a trend of companies filing lawsuits against each other. Competitors either sue in a court or file a complaint with the National Advertising division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus – making claims of false advertising. So far this year there have been eighty-two formal complaints made by companies, not consumers, to the Bureaus, about false advertising, compared to sixty-two in 2007. This shows a remarkable increase. The purpose of the companies’ filing of complaints and lawsuits actually is not to win money but to make their competitors withdraw or amend their ads. Cases involving products such as Pantene and Dove, Campbell soup and Progresso soup, may look meaningless. The article says that even consumers do not believe the claims made about the products in the ads so why are the companies fighting over these claims? However, according to advertisers, these ads influence and mislead consumers and cause a drop in sales. Some law firms that deal with ads dispute this and say that it is a game for marketers. Last fall, Campbell soup started an ad campaign that claimed i its brand of Harvest Soups were made with “tender loving care” while Progresso soup is made with “Monosodium glutamate” that is, the ads stated Harvest soup is made with “TLC” while Progresso soup is made with “MSG.” Progresso responded with its own ads and both companies argued on. As a result, both companies lost customers based on the messages in the ads. It created confusion among customers. ”
It was not the complaints or the lawsuits that caused the sales of Progresso and Campbell to drop – it was the ads. “Advertisers should write ads that talk about their own products and not their competitors’ in order to avoid complaints and lawsuits and even dropping sales.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/business/media/22lawsuits.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=false%20advertising&st=cse