MarketingWeek.co.nz

You may have spotted the press release issued yesterday by the Commerce Commission, warning retailers  that “when offering free gifts or prizes, they should ensure that the fine print does not materially alter the terms of the offer. This is particularly the case when the information would be critical to a person’s decision to buy the goods or services.”

The advice is of relevance to all marketers, not just the retail trade:

“If the overall impression given by a promotion or advertisement is misleading, it risks breaching the Fair Trading Act no matter what information is provided in fine print,” said Greg Allan, Commerce Commission Fair Trading Manager, Wellington.

So what brought this on?

The Commission found itself issuing a warning to Borders that a pre-Christmas voucher promotion risked breaching the Fair Trading Act.

In November and December 2009 Borders advertised a promotion with the headline offer “Receive $20 in vouchers for every $75 you spend at Borders until Christmas.” The promotion was widely advertised in-store and online through an e-newsletter and on Borders’ website. However, the small print of the offer specified that customers could only redeem one $10 voucher in January and a second $10 voucher February, which, in the Commission’s view, materially changed the headline offer.

As the Commission noted, “misleading representations about gifts and prizes can lead consumers to make purchases that they may not otherwise have made at the store.”

That, of course, is the whole reason for such promotions. No, not to mislead, but to make sales that would otherwise not have happened. But we take the Commission’s point: if your headline offer is materially different from what you’re really offering, expect to be disembowelled in public as a result.