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Lawyers’ review of TV ads is in most of the case considered as an expensive waste of time, but in some cases it can lead to relevant savings.
It happens quite often that marketing managers call us complaining for the comments (issues) raised on their ready-to-be-launched TV ad just claiming that their “similar” had been previously approved and we cannot complain about it at this stage!
However, in a country like Italy where fines up to € 500,000 can be issued in case of misleading advertising practices and promotions not compliant with stringent regulations and even higher damages can be awarded in case of breach of intellectual property rights, such kind of issues should not be underestimated.
It happens quite often that marketing managers call us complaining for the comments (issues) raised on their ready-to-be-launched TV ad just claiming that their “similar” had been previously approved and we cannot complain about it at this stage!
However, in a country like Italy where fines up to € 500,000 can be issued in case of misleading advertising practices and promotions not compliant with stringent regulations and even higher damages can be awarded in case of breach of intellectual property rights, such kind of issues should not be underestimated.
The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) that has jurisdiction on advertising-related disputes is very active, and consumers and competitors can challenge a marketing campaign merely contacting the free number of the AGCM without the need to become a party of the proceeding. Moreover in sensitive sectors, like gambling for instance, the approach from the AGCM is even more stringent given the higher risk of potential damages for consumers.
Finally, also the consequences of a mere decision from the Self-Regulatory Advertising Court should not be underestimated since all the media companies are members of the Self-Regulatory Advertising Association and therefore an order of termination of a marketing campaign would be immediately enforced.
The approach we usually recommend to clients is to have at least marketing guidelines drafted by local lawyers for their marketing team and require a review from the legal department at least for major campaigns. Better to avoid risks than repairing them.
Want to share your thoughts on the above? Feel free to contact me, Giulio Coraggio.
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