Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Communication failure and interpretive conflict
- Part II Making sense of ‘meaning’
- Part III Verbal disputes and approaches to resolving them
- Part IV Analysing disputes in different fields of law and regulation
- 9 Defamation: ‘reasonably capable of bearing the meaning attributed’
- 10 Advertising: ‘not only what is said, but what is reasonably implied’
- 11 Offensiveness: ‘If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable’
- Part V Conclusion
- References
- Index
10 - Advertising: ‘not only what is said, but what is reasonably implied’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Communication failure and interpretive conflict
- Part II Making sense of ‘meaning’
- Part III Verbal disputes and approaches to resolving them
- Part IV Analysing disputes in different fields of law and regulation
- 9 Defamation: ‘reasonably capable of bearing the meaning attributed’
- 10 Advertising: ‘not only what is said, but what is reasonably implied’
- 11 Offensiveness: ‘If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable’
- Part V Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter, I consider the meanings conveyed by adverts and other marketing communications. I discuss how both explicit and implied product and service claims can be challenged in advertising law and complaint procedures. When a complaint is made, the meaning of an advert is typically tested against an interpretive standard based on the view of an ‘average consumer’ (supplemented in some jurisdictions by evidence from consumer surveys). Problems to do with meaning arise, however, in two main kinds of borderline case: with legitimate ‘trade puffs’, which sing the praise of a product or service in a genre of accepted marketplace exaggeration; and with face-value claims that are defended on the paradoxical basis that no one will believe them. Widening my account of advertising, I compare two established approaches to consumer meaning: a belief that product-related facts, which may or may not be known to the consumer, determine what a contested expression means in a given commercial use; and an approach based on inferences drawn by a consumer in a given sales context. These two approaches underlie two acknowledged axes of advertising content, ‘information’ and ‘persuasion’. The claim is commonly made that a clear contrast is perceived between these two axes. I argue, by contrast, that the distinction between information and persuasion fails to provide a reliable classification of advertising ‘meaning’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Meaning in the MediaDiscourse, Controversy and Debate, pp. 174 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010