Apple’s Advertisement Falls from the Tree
Very few companies push the envelope when it comes to marketing their product like Apple (AAPL), however we found out that even they are not outside of the confines of the law. Recently Apple advertised they said “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone”. See the commercial below:
However it turns out that, as amazing as the new iPhone may be, it cannot access “all parts of the Internet”. There are several sizable technology components such as Flash Video and Java Script that do not work on Apple’s wireless device. Apple attempted to defend the claim by saying that the intent of the assertion was simply to state that the iPhone’s web browser could access any website, but not every particular service. However, considering that some of the most popular websites are not able to fully render on the phone, the courts ruled that Apple was misleading the public with their ads, see below for the official statement,
“We noted Apples argument that the ad was about site availability rather than technical detail, but considered that the claims “You’ll never know which part of the internet you’ll need” and “all parts of the internet are on the iPhone” implied users would be able to access all websites and see them in their entirety. We considered that, because the ad had not explained the limitations, viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a website normally accessible through a PC rather than just having the ability to reach the website.”
So regardless how large your brand reach is, accurate advertising is a prerequisite to keeping legally clean. And if you are working for a publicly traded company, make sure that each piece of marketing material that is displayed to the public is true.
