Or for that matter, and this is my point, what is the price of a cup of coffee?
If one is staying at a Best Western, or a Hampton Inn, the coffee flows freely all day (from industrial-sized thermos flasks). If one is at home, drinking instant, it's around 30 - 50 cents a cup depending on the brand and how much one heaps the coffee spoon. If one uses K-cups --not an environmentally sustainable choice because of all the non-recyclable plastic-- the cost is about double. And if one goes to the byword brand on any main street for barista service, the cost starts at $2.
With such a price variation, how do pitchmen on television get away with telling you that their product costs less than --or about the same as-- a cup of coffee every day?
Again this week, the legal bloggers have been talking about either AI or Advertising. In the case of the former, a Detroit lady is suing the City and one or two of its law enforcement officers because they used AI facial recognition to misidentify an innocent person as a car jacking suspect based on a years-old photograph.
How deceitful is it, if the witness were to state, for instance, that the very recent perpetrator looked to be in her twenties, so, instead of showing him a recent photo of a forty-year-old, they knowingly show a photo of a random woman from the database when she was twenty-something?
Perhaps driver's license photos should never be used for this sort of thing, but according to Thomas Germain, writing for Consumer Reports, law enforcement at all levels has a database that includes DMV product, and millions of Americans who have done nothing more edgy than obtain a driver's license have their photos in the system.
Someone described all this use of a person's photograph without their knowledge or permission akin to a covert op. And then there is Facebook, or the entity that was once known as Facebook.
I suspected that the Facial Recognition tagging was used promiscuously (randomly) as a way of promoting oneself or ones work product to as many "friends" as possible. Ah, well.
Legal bloggers Morgan E. Smith and Margaret A. Esquenet of the Finngan law firm's Incontestable Blog explain what advertisers and influencers now need to know about writing and publishing endorsements and incentivized reviews.
There are now teeth in the law, and those who write fake (whether negative, or glowing) reviews or endorsements could in legally liable for potentially misleading the public.
Legal Blogger Douglas A. Thompson of the law firm Snell & Wilmer (a new resource to me) writes about the same important FTC updates, with the added frisson of the possibity of class action suits against unfortunate perpetrators of less-than-wholly-accurate reviews.
Daniel Kaufman, partner at Baker & Hostetler wrote about something similar last month about online review practices and considerations. If you missed it before, it is well worth reading.
This is the most interesting to me.
"Conditioned incentives for reviews. It would be unlawful to provide any incentive for a review where the incentive is conditioned on the writing of a review that expresses a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative."
As, I have mentioned in the past, I've seen a lot of apartment rental complexes where tenants are offered a rent rebate, or a discount, or lottery tickets in exchange for a 5 star review of the property.
Finally, there is an audio discussion between Dan and Annie about all the myths and misconceptions that get incurious advertisers into trouble. (I have to say, I did not listen to it. My computer is playing up.
https://bbbprograms.org/media-center/pd/nad-top-10#page=1
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
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