FTC investigating use of review quotes in ads
01-14-03, 10:07 AM
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FTC investigating use of review quotes in ads
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/bu...ia/14ADCO.html
"The commission contends that its guidelines — including recommendations against distorting the meaning of an endorser's opinion and portraying paid endorsers as actual customers — should apply when movie advertisements quote film critics. But marketing teams at movie studios have on occasion demonstrated a different approach.
Critics have long complained that their reviews are sometimes so wrenched out of context that their words appear laudatory when they were in reality much more nuanced. Movie ads also often contain raves from little-known critics who bless just about anything, even some critical dogs like the John Travolta film "Battlefield Earth."
Sometimes, the studios have even invented critics.
In 2001, Sony Pictures Entertainment was discovered to have concocted quotes from a fictitious movie critic for four movies, including "The Animal" with Rob Schneider. The name of the reviewer, David Manning, actually belonged to a medical equipment salesman. Several studios, including 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures, also admitted that they had hired actors or paid employees to appear in "man-on the street" commercials as if they were unpaid moviegoers.
"It seems to me that it's gotten a little worse," said David Ansen, movie critic at Newsweek magazine, referring to these instances of misleading marketing of movies. "There's been more of them as the stakes have risen."
Not that suspect marketing is new. A review by Mr. Ansen of "Foul Play," the 1978 comedy starring Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, was quoted in newspaper ads as describing the film as "good fun."
Mr. Ansen, however, recalled that his intent could not have been more different. "I had written that though it was all intended as good fun, it's about as much fun as getting hit by a bus."
"The commission contends that its guidelines — including recommendations against distorting the meaning of an endorser's opinion and portraying paid endorsers as actual customers — should apply when movie advertisements quote film critics. But marketing teams at movie studios have on occasion demonstrated a different approach.
Critics have long complained that their reviews are sometimes so wrenched out of context that their words appear laudatory when they were in reality much more nuanced. Movie ads also often contain raves from little-known critics who bless just about anything, even some critical dogs like the John Travolta film "Battlefield Earth."
Sometimes, the studios have even invented critics.
In 2001, Sony Pictures Entertainment was discovered to have concocted quotes from a fictitious movie critic for four movies, including "The Animal" with Rob Schneider. The name of the reviewer, David Manning, actually belonged to a medical equipment salesman. Several studios, including 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures, also admitted that they had hired actors or paid employees to appear in "man-on the street" commercials as if they were unpaid moviegoers.
"It seems to me that it's gotten a little worse," said David Ansen, movie critic at Newsweek magazine, referring to these instances of misleading marketing of movies. "There's been more of them as the stakes have risen."
Not that suspect marketing is new. A review by Mr. Ansen of "Foul Play," the 1978 comedy starring Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, was quoted in newspaper ads as describing the film as "good fun."
Mr. Ansen, however, recalled that his intent could not have been more different. "I had written that though it was all intended as good fun, it's about as much fun as getting hit by a bus."
01-15-03, 01:04 AM
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i don't pay as much attention to critic/media opinions as something that will sway my want to watch a movie. i mainly go by word of mouth and trailers, but i am all for people telling the whole truth in their advertising, especially critics i am sure they have found for really bad movies (i bet someone was paid to said battlefied earth was somehow good. it wasn't)
