Word: ftc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like a chaperone at a high school prom, the Federal Trade Commission tapped Dancer Arthur Murray and his wife Kathryn on the shoulder last week, told them that some of their fast steps were out of line. The FTC objected particularly to the "misleading and deceptive" quizzes that it said the Murrays used to help build their $45 million-a-year business...
...cigarettes sold. Filters rescued the industry from a skid six years ago when the first cancer-cigarette studies were widely publicized, helped sell a record 456 billion cigarettes last year. They also touched off a heated controversy on their advertising claims of reduced tar and nicotine. Last week FTC Chairman Earl W. Kintner announced that all cigarette makers had agreed to end the tar derby by dropping claims to filter effectiveness, taking the health pitch out of their...
Kintner's announcement ended a long struggle by the FTC to clarify the benefit of filters for the baffled smoker. An FTC request in 1952 for an injunction to stop health-claim tobacco advertisements was blocked when the U.S. District Court ruled that cigarettes are not a "drug." Later the FTC suggested certain guide lines to assist the companies in documenting their claims, but let them use their own testing laboratories until the commission was able to develop a standard tar-and-nicotine test. The FTC never was able to establish a standard amid the welter of laboratory tests...
What really brought on the new ground rules was an aggressive campaign introducing the new filter brand Life last fall, which resulted in a formal FTC complaint against Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. for false filter advertising claims. The Life ads convinced the FTC something had to be done for the industry as a whole, and the formal complaint convinced the cigarette makers that it would be prudent to agree to end the filter derby. Said Kintner gratefully, noting that cigarette advertisers spend $190 million a year: "It is no small feat for them to change the major emphasis...
...Washington, FTC's Kintner, 47, patiently puffed his pipe, proudly showed off the favorable mail that came in after the ad. (Sample: "Hogwash. Thanks, Mr. Kintner-Glenn Lewis. Average American. Elkin, N.C.") In Manhattan, other ad agency bosses gagged on their Gibsons, labeled the ad "a phony." Snapped one: "A deplorable exhibition of advertising sophistry at its worst. The public will say, 'That's the way Madison Avenue reacts to criticism-they're thieves and crooks...