It’s interesting to see how the FTC’s December 1, 2009 law regarding testimonials and disclosure has started to play out in both the online and offline world.
This morning I saw a television ad for a stop smoking drug which used a testimonial. In the commercial, they had both a verbal and textual statement of a customer’s “typical” results. What they said was “in studies, 44% of customers were quit smoking between weeks 9-12.”
To me, this suggests they focused in on the portion of their test results which showed the best performance (9-12 weeks) and reported on that number.
I would pose the following questions:
1. Is it really typical results if you only focus on the best portion of the data. For example, if the studies lasted for six months (24 weeks) and the typical results from weeks 13-24 were that 90% of customers started smoking again, wouldn’t their reported typical results be misleading? Or do they simply craft some of their studies to end at a particular point in time (e.g. 12 weeks) when they know they will be able to show very positive data?
2. Shouldn’t they have to disclose the full length of the study?
3. Does 44% constitute “typical”? Do you not need a majority (great than 50%) to claim “typical”?
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