Advertising

Martin Algie is the head of the firm's Competition Group, including the Advertising Practice.

We are at the forefront of advertising law in this country.

  • Martin is a regular contributor to B+T, Australia's highest-circulating marketing, advertising and media magazine;
  • Martin regular speaks at leading industry conferences; and
  • the practice is on top of the latest happenings in legal compliance and advertising, publishing a monthly update on these matters for clients.

Why do you need a lawyer?

You need a lawyer as an advertiser for the same reason you need insurance.

You will probably not be legally compliant if you check only the accuracy of the express claims in your advertisement and insert a disclaimer. Therein lies the risk - advertisers often go no further than this.

As an advertiser, you need to realise that the representations you make include what your express statements imply. Put another way, you will be held to account for whatever members of the target audience reasonably understand your advertisement to say.

As advertising lawyers, the process we have to go through when assisting advertisers or advertising agencies is the following:

  1. we have to identify the target audience - that is influenced by:
    • who the advertiser is attempting to sell to; and
    • the likely readership of the journal or other form of the media that the advertiser plans to use;
  2. we then form a view about the level of sophistication and understanding of that target audience, particularly identifying any pockets within that target audience that may have a less than comprehensive understanding or skill set;
  3. based on these factors, we then form a view on what the target audience (or sections of the target audience) will take from the proposed advertisement; and
  4. where that understanding is incorrect, we will make suggestions based on our extensive experience in these matters to ensure that perception marries with reality.

Our experience

The Wisewoulds Competition Team has had significant experience over a long period working with major advertisers. Those advertisers that the team has acted for at one time or another include:

  • Borders;
  • JB Hi-Fi;
  • Beaurepaires/Dunlop;
  • Tru Energy;
  • Safe-n-Sound baby restraints;
  • McMillan Shakespeare;
  • Nutrimetics;
  • Olex Cables; and
  • a major elite brand in the motor vehicle industry.

Costs and recommended method of working

The cliché in this industry involves an advertiser sending copy to its lawyer at 4.50 on a Friday afternoon, asking for a signoff in time to place the advertisement for the Saturday morning papers. There is no question that the legal bill will be minimised in this way - after all, we may have only 10 minutes within which to do our work! The cost to the advertiser, however, may be a grossly disfigured and compromised advertisement.

To achieve the best results, we strongly recommend involving lawyers in the creative process. If we see story boards for TVCs or notes of ideas, we can point out the potential pitfalls and issues. That will allow you to avoid major problems and facilitate your advertising agency to focus all of its energies on productive creativity. If we then see the ad as it progresses through the creative process, you will get a much better and more effective advertisement, in part, because your lawyers and your advertising agency will be on the one wave length.

The myth about working co-operatively in the manner recommended is that you legal spend will be substantially more and, indeed, make the exercise uneconomic. That could not be further from the truth. The way we work at Wisewoulds is to provide direct advice informally, that is to the point. We will provide you with clear guidance on how to ensure legal compliance. That way, reviewing a draft advertisement and providing advice is a relatively quick and, therefore, cheap process.

Advertising practitioners: