Marketing-claims review program

Description

Deceptive-practices prohibitions are the consumer-protection backstop that runs underneath every other product-level rule: FTC Act §5 in the US, the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) Articles 5 through 9 plus the Annex I "always unfair" list, the UK CPRs 2008 (now updated by the DMCC Act 2024), Brazil's Consumer Defense Code, the Australian Consumer Law, and equivalents in most major markets. The doctrinal shape is roughly the same everywhere: a representation is deceptive if it is likely to mislead a reasonable consumer about a material fact, and unfair if it causes substantial consumer injury that is not reasonably avoidable. A working prohibition program has three pieces: a screening workflow that runs marketing claims, product descriptions, comparative advertising, and pricing representations through legal review before publication (with the threshold for review tuned to risk), a substantiation file for every express claim that requires proof (efficacy claims, savings claims, environmental claims, "Made in USA" claims), and a periodic audit of live representations against the substantiation files (claims drift over time as marketing teams iterate). The UCPD Annex I list is the highest-risk corner: those 31 practices are deceptive per se with no reasonable-consumer test, and "we did not realize that was on the list" is not a defense.

Applicability

Applies when: customer segment is b2c or b2b2c.

How predicates are evaluated

Required by (10 regulations)

• ACL

  ACL §18 misleading or deceptive conduct + §29 false or misleading representations.

  Competition and Consumer Act 2010, Schedule 2

• FTC Act

  FTC Act §5 (15 U.S.C. § 45): prohibition on unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. Enforcement via consent decrees, administrative orders, and §13(b) federal-court actions for restitution and disgorgement.

  15 U.S.C. §§41-58; 16 CFR Parts 255, 425

  Source →

• CDC

  CDC Articles 36-37: misleading + abusive advertising prohibitions.

  Lei nº 8.078, de 11 de setembro de 1990 (Código de Defesa do Consumidor), regulated by Decreto nº 7.962, de 15 de março de 2013 (e-commerce provisions)

• CAN-SPAM

  15 U.S.C. §§7701-7713; 16 CFR Part 316

• Omnibus

  Directive (EU) 2019/2161

• E-Commerce Rules

  E-commerce Rules prohibition on artificial scarcity / flash-sale manipulation (india-ec-no-flash-sale-manipulation).

  Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, issued under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 (Act No. 35 of 2019), as amended through 2023

• ASCT

  SCT misleading-pricing prohibition (japan-sct-misleading-pricing) + Premiums and Representations Act.

  Act on Specified Commercial Transactions (Act No. 57 of 2000, as amended by Act No. 70 of 2021, effective June 1, 2022)

• Korea E-Commerce Act

  Act on the Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce, etc. (Act No. 6687)

• E-Commerce Law

  Royal Decree M/126, Electronic Commerce Law, issued 7/11/1440 AH (July 10, 2019), effective 19/2/1441 AH (October 19, 2019)

• UCPD

  Directive 2005/29/EC general prohibition (Article 5), misleading actions (Article 6), misleading omissions (Article 7), aggressive practices (Article 8), Annex I always-unfair list (including 'free' claim restrictions).

  Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council

Fulfilled by (4)

• writer · partial · low effort · $$
  Writer's claim-detection + brand-style enforcement catches some deceptive-claim patterns at draft time; legal review still required.
• grammarly-business · partial · low effort · $
  Grammarly Business style guide enforces substantiation-first language; not a substitute for legal review.
• external-counsel · full · medium effort · $$$
  Outside counsel periodic review of marketing materials remains the gold-standard mitigation, especially for UCPD Annex I + comparative claims.
• In-house build · medium effort
  Legal-marketing partnership with claim-substantiation database + pre-publication review workflow.

ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• marketing-claim substantiation file per express claim
• internal review SOP + sign-off matrix
• audit log of comparative-advertising reviews
• training records for marketing + content authors
• remediation log for flagged claims