Business: Taking It Back

Corrective ads for Listerine

In promotions stretching back to 1921, Warner-Lambert has asserted that its Listerine mouthwash helps prevent colds and sore throats. Last week that claim was finally snuffed out by a fatal regulatory infection called truth in advertising. The Supreme Court declined to review a lower court decision upholding a 1975 Federal Trade Commission order: the company must not only stop making the claim but specifically advertise that it is not true. In its next $10 million worth of Listerine ads—about a year's budget—Warner-Lambert must insert this statement: "Listerine will not help prevent colds or sore throats or lessen their severity." In the course of its review, which began in 1972, the FTC found that Listerine was no more effective in combatting colds than warm water. Doubtless Warner-Lambert will bury the admission as inconspicuously as possible in ads declaring that Listerine does cure bad breath—another old claim.

Nonetheless, last week's Supreme Court refusal to review the order is a significant boost for the FTC. The agency in the past seven years has forced other companies to run "corrective" ads asserting in effect that their previous ads made false claims. Companies bowing to such orders include ITT, Continental Baking for Profile bread (whose claimed fewer calories per slice, the FTC charged, was attained simply by making its slices thinner), Ocean Spray for cranberry juice and Amstar for Domino sugar. All signed consent decrees; Warner-Lambert was the first to ask the courts to rule that it did not have to take back its previous claims. Now that it has definitively lost, says a jubilant FTC staffer, "I think we will see more corrective ads in the future."