Does a Big-Mac every look like what it does on television? For that matter does anything on television look or work like it does when you purchase it? Your answer to that would probably be no. So the question we have to ask ourselves is "is what these companies do ethical?". Well, since the dawn of television ads having always been somewhat misleading. In the fifties smoking ads were always portraying that cigarettes are perfectly fine to your health.

We must first must look at the laws of the land to find out if it is illegal or not. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, as we all know as free speech amendment, places restraints on the government to regulate advertising. On the other hand though, the Federal Trade Commission was established to regulate deceptive advertising. But what is considered deceptive advertising and who decides that? Well those questions are mainly decided by the commissioners of the FTC. That worries me though. A few people can dictate what is and what is not good for us. The FTC has created policies of what is deceptive advertising.

The basic approach of the FTC is that is an advertisement conveys a message that differs from the reality of the product, that is deception. This requires the FTC to look at the evidence in two different ways. (1) evidence concerning what message is conveyed to the consumer and (2) evidence that relates directly to the products capabilities. But how they decide what product to look at and what evidence do they use? In one case it is up to the consumer. They rely on mostly surveys that are distributed to the consumers. The other way is to conduct test on products themselves. For example, fuel mileage on a car; is it actually what the commercials advertise.

The problem now lies what do they so with a product that is found to be deceptive. Most companies, when found out to have deceptive ads, usually agree to change and follow FTC regulations. But what if they do not? Then the advertiser will face three possible repercussions.

1. a Cease and Desist Order, which makes the advertiser to stop
2. an Affirmative Disclosure Order, which forces the advertiser to include more information on the product
3. a Corrective Advertisement, this is another commercial which forces them to correct the deceptions in previous commercials

We all know that advertisement is deception and deception is advertisement. Companies rely on use to use common sense. Things will always look better than they are. How many of you have watched an infomercial and believed that the product will work? Not many I'm sure. If you think that a knife will cut through a lead pipe then cut a tomato with ease, you deserved to be deceived.

For more information on ethics in advertising, check out the following sites:

http://advertising.utexas.edu/research/law/index.html