No more superlatives

How can promotions be advertised? Should we emphasises superlatives, or is present Hungarian practice in line with EU guidelines at all? For answers, we turned to dr. Judit Firniksz, of Réti, Antall & Madl Landwell Ügyvédi Iroda. Fines imposed by the GVH are increasing steeply in cases related to unfair trade practices used by FMCG companies. The experts of the GVH examine the B2C communication of companies, aimed at consumers. Regarding supermarkets, their leaflets are subjected to careful scrutiny, especially product descriptions, as a result of an increasing number of complaints from consumers. A problem encountered frequently is that the product advertised with a promotional price is not actually sold for that price. Another problem is that promoted items are often not available in the stores. Fines increase as do the number of complaints. A HUF 100 million fine is not uncommon nowadays. According to law, fines should be proportionate to the number of consumers effected by misleading ads. Since the same visual and textual content is often used on TV as in leaflets, the number of consumers effected can reach millions. Price guarantees have lead to frequent misunderstandings in recent years, as it is very hard for customers to prove that they have found the same product for a lower price elsewhere. Most of such problems could and should be remedied by the stores with an efficient monitoring system. Another practice which leads to many complaints is the use of superlatives for advertised products, since advertisers are ever more frequently called upon to prove such claims. The situation where advertisers rely almost exclusively on using low price and superlatives as arguments will change soon, with the strict and standardised EU directive no. 2005/29 about unfair trade practices becoming effective in June 2007. The directive will also contain a blacklist of trade practices which can be sanctioned automatically, without any deliberation.