On March 12, the New York State Senate voted to include food and beverage advertising restrictions in its proposed budget, NY S8308-B. These restrictions were originally introduced as NY S213-B, which characterizes advertising unhealthy foods as “inherently misleading.” S213-B aims to protect children from the “disastrous health outcomes that follow the overconsumption of”
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Company Complies with NARB Decision on Review Disclosures After FTC Intervenes
Smile Prep operates a website that provides reviews of clear aligners (or “invisible braces”) based on an “extensive five-point analysis.” Because Smile Prep’s sole source of revenue consists of commissions from some of the companies it reviews, Smile Direct Club (or “SDC”) filed an NAD challenge suggesting that the company “slants its rankings and reviews…
Washington State Poised to Launch Artificial Intelligence Task Force
As we have previously reported, state attorneys general (AGs) have great interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and we do not see this stopping anytime soon. This time, our focus is on a bipartisan legislative proposal from Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson to create an AI task force, which the Washington State Legislature passed (…
Court Holds Reasonable Consumers Won’t be Misled by Sephora’s “Clean” Claims
Last week, we posted about an NAD decision that provides some helpful guidance for advertisers who want to use the word “clean” to describe their products. One day later, a New York federal court issued a decision in another case involving the same word. Luckily, the court’s analysis is generally consistent with NAD’s analysis and…
New York Weight Loss Supplement Law Has Stakeholders Scrambling But Faces Legal Challenges
On October 25, 2023, New York enacted GBL 391-oo, which bans the sale of over-the-counter diet pills and dietary supplements intended for weight loss and muscle building to individuals under the age of 18. Covered products include diet pills and dietary supplements that are “labeled, marketed or otherwise represented for the purpose of achieving weight…
FTC Staff Doubles Down on Rejected Koscot Standard for Pyramiding Claims, Challenges DSSRC IDS Guidance
Over the past two years, we have seen FTC staff express its opinions on the state of the law in multiple ways. In December 2022, for example, staff issued its Health Products Compliance Guidance, intended to supersede the FTC’s 1998 guidance, “Dietary Supplements: An Advertising Guide for Industry,” as we covered here. We also…
NAD Decision Addresses Influencer Disclosures
Last week, NAD announced a decision involving a challenge that a competitor brought against Wonderbelly involving (among other things) an influencer campaign.
Wonderbelly engaged a number of influencers to promote its Wonderbelly Antacids on social media. The challenger argued that many of these influencers failed to properly disclose their material connection to Wonderbelly and that…
NAD Provides Guidance on “Sustainable” Claims
Yesterday, we looked at an NAD case involving claims by Amyris Clean Beauty that it used “clean ingredients and clean formulas” and considered what lessons other advertisers who want to make “clean” claims should take away from the decision. As part of that same case, NAD also looked at various “sustainable” claims made by the…
NAD Provides Guidance on “Clean” Claims
In a recent decision, NAD notes that “clean” claims are “ubiquitous in the beauty industry.” Despite that, the term doesn’t have a clear definition and reasonable minds can disagree over exactly what it means. That creates a challenge for advertisers who are generally required to be able to substantiate all reasonable interpretations of their claims.…
Health Data Privacy: What We’re Hearing
U.S. privacy developments are moving quickly, but health data privacy is racing forward. Companies that come into contact with consumers’ health data need to track and respond to a variety of developments. Most notably, these include Washington’s My Health My Data (MHMD) Act, a similar law in Nevada, “sensitive data” and “sensitive personal…