ADVICE TO ADVERTISERS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16209, 6 December 1926, Page 13

ADVICE TO ADVERTISERS

AVOIDANCE OF PITFALLS. SOME LEGAL REQUIREMENTS. Legal aspects of advertising ivero explained by Mr. L. P. Leary, in speaking at the meeting of the Auckland i Advertising Club. The- president, Mr. O. E. .Clinkard, presided. Advertisements, said Mr'., Leary, consisted of tho written word, and it might be that some contained an offer which, if accepted, became a contract. Advertisers sometimes took the opportunity, of appealing to a national failing by promoting schemes on the borderline of lottery. The English definition of a tottery was the distribution of prizes by lot or chance, so that to escape, tho penalties of a lottery, prizes had to be distributed on a basis of a certain degree of skill. Provided that skill was involved the scheme was not a. lottery. Every written advertisement was in danger of amounting to a libel, because the adevrtiser was trying to put forward that his goods were best. An advertiser was allowed to say that his, goods were better than his neighbor's, but he could not say that his neighbor's voods were of poor quality. In other words, the disparagement, had to be absolute and not relative before action could be taken.

Care had also to el> observed, said Mr. Leary, that misrepresentation, innocent or otherwise, did not creep into advertisements, and a watch had to be kept on statements that might be construed into a guarantee..