Advertising
What does Advertising mean in American Law?
The definition of Advertising in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:
The process of, and business devoted to, trying to convince potential customers that one’s goods are better, cheaper, or both than those of one’s competitors.
Advertising is highly controversial. Its primary function is to let people know that certain products exist, that they have certain specified characteristics, where they can be acquired, and how much they cost-information without which no modem economy, capitalist or socialist, could possibly operate. But advertising is also used to persuade people to buy, and that generates most of the criticism. First, advertising is sometimes flatly false, i.e., out-and-out lies (“Clearopore cures acne on one application”) are sometimes told; laws must be passed (and harder, enforced) to try to cope with this.
But bare-faced lies are comparatively rare in mass-market selling, for it is too easy most of the time to discover the lie after one product-buying test; it is thus economically inefficient in most businesses to rely on open mendacity. Hence, much of the craft of advertising goes into portraying a product in such a way that customers will be attracted to it but cannot easily discover the falsity, if any, in the mode of attraction, e.g., by promising freedom from non-existent evils (“Does she hate your lips-or is it the breath behind them?”) or ones which will cure themselves (“Two drops of Smootho before bed, and your bloodshot eyes will purify”), or by selling things which are indeed necessary to a clearly desired end as if they are sufficient to produce it (e.g., selling an effective acne remedy to a teenager whose moribund sex life is the product not only of spottiness, but of ignorance, ugliness, vulgarity, inexperience, and poverty). Sometimes the technique is to associate the product with some blessed state, but not causally, i.e., to imply that all the Beautiful people drink Gusto Beer, not that drinking it will make one beautiful.
The extent to which a modern public is actually fooled is unclear. Advertising is to modern consumption what the spoor of the buffalo is to huntergatherers; one tends to get pretty sophisticated about the whole thing. Moreover, there are other people working for other products at the same time. But advertisers certainly do continue to seek, at enormous expense, to influence consumer choice, and it may be significant that much of advertising is devoted to selling particular brands of what seem to dispassionate observers to be functionally identical. Perhaps the chief danger of very extensive advertising is that all advertisers tend together to generate one common message: Happiness comes from things that can be bought. This does tend to put people who want to disseminate information about non-buyable “goods” (clear water; good character) at a disadvantage, for it is hard to sell (i.e., get paid for) pure information, i.e., messages not attached to any other saleable product.
Concept of Advertising in the context of Real Property
A short definition of Advertising: Usually done by signs on the property and newspaper ads. Ads for the sale of real estate have modernly been required to conform to certain standards regarding disclosure of complete financing information if any financing information is contained in the ad.
Concept of Advertising in the context of Real Property
A short definition of Advertising: Usually done by signs on the property and newspaper ads. Ads for the sale of real estate have modernly been required to conform to certain standards regarding disclosure of complete financing information if any financing information is contained in the ad.
Resources
Legal English Vocabulary: Advertising in Spanish
Online translation of the English legal term advertising into Spanish: propaganda (English to Spanish translation) . More about legal dictionary from english to spanish online.
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