Legal review of advertising, promotions and prize draws

Advertising binds

In consumer law, what is advertised forms part of what the company undertook to deliver. A piece that overstates a benefit, announces a price without everything that has to be paid, or promotes a product without enough stock does not create a reputation problem: it creates an obligation someone will enforce. Advertising that misleads on price, origin, benefits or availability is one of the most frequent sources of claims.

This service exists so the review happens before publication rather than after the complaint. We work with the marketing team and the agency, on timelines compatible with a commercial calendar. Most of the work is not saying no: it is finding the version of the message that keeps the commercial idea and removes the promise the company cannot keep.

What we review

• Campaigns and creative. Claims about performance, results, composition, origin or sustainability, and the evidence behind them.
• Prices and discounts. How the total price is announced, what is said about additional charges, and how a discount is presented against the previous price.
• Promotions and offers. Validity, coverage, available stock, restrictions and how those conditions are made visible.
• Prize draws, contests and loyalty programmes. Entry rules, mechanics, delivery of the prize and handling of entrants' data.
• Comparative advertising. Where the material names or disparages a competitor, the analysis is run together with our competition practice: one message can raise a consumer issue and an unfair competition issue at the same time.
• Third-party content. Posts by agencies, creators and influencers, where the company answers for what is said on its behalf.
• Point-of-sale material. Shelf talkers, catalogues, price tags and anything printed that outlives the campaign it was made for.

Small print does not rescue a bad claim

It is common to try to fix an imprecise message with an unreadable footnote. It does not work. The condition that changes the meaning of the offer has to sit where the consumer sees it before deciding, with visual weight comparable to the benefit announced. When a condition will not fit in the piece, the problem is not the design: the headline promised more than the company is going to deliver. The same goes for conditions that live only behind a link nobody opens: if the consumer had to go looking for them, they were not disclosed.

How we work with marketing

1. Creative review. We return the material with the conditions that must be visible and with suggested wording, not just with the objection.
2. Terms ready to publish. We draft the terms of the promotion or the contest in the format the company already uses.
3. Substantiation. We identify which claims need documentary support and help organise that file before publication.
4. Written criteria. For recurring cases we leave rules the team applies without asking again.
5. Training. A session with marketing and the agency on the company's own material, not on somebody else's examples.

What the client receives

• The reviewed creative, with the conditions to be incorporated and where they belong in the material.
• The terms and conditions of promotions, contests and loyalty programmes, ready to publish.
• Written criteria for marketing on advertised prices, discounts, comparisons and sustainability claims.
• Clauses and rules for contracts with agencies, content creators and influencers.
• A list of the support worth keeping for each advertising claim, at the level of detail that helps against a later information request.

Typical situations we handle

• A seasonal campaign with tiered discounts and limited stock.
• A social media contest that needs rules before it is announced.
• An environmental or origin claim marketing wants to use and nobody has verified.
• A competitor or a consumer challenges published material and the company must decide what to correct.