US Watchdog Bans Photoshop Use In Cosmetics Ads 383
MrSeb writes "In an interesting move that should finally bring the United States' fast-and-loose advertising rules and regulations into line with the UK and EU, the National Advertising Division (NAD) — the advertising industry's self-regulating watchdog — has moved to ban the misleading use of photoshopping and enhanced post-production in cosmetics adverts. The ban stems from a Procter & Gamble (P&G) CoverGirl ad that photoshopped a model's eyelashes to exaggerate the effects of a mascara. There was a footnote in the ad's spiel about the photo being manipulated, but according to the director of the NAD, that simply isn't enough: 'You can't use a photograph to demonstrate how a cosmetic will look after it is applied to a woman's face and then — in the mice type — have a disclosure that says "okay, not really."' The NAD ruled that the ad was unacceptable, and P&G has since discontinued it. The ruling goes one step further, though, and points out that 'professional styling, make-up, photography and the product's inherent covering and smoothing nature' should be enough, without adding Photoshop to the mix. The cosmetics industry is obviously a good starting point — but what if the ban leaks over to product photography (I'm looking at you, Burger King), video gameplay demos, or a photographer's own works?"
Count on the NADs (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting that the NADs would be protecting me from beautiful women. Hm.
They're not protecting you (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:They're not protecting you (Score:4, Insightful)
The word you were looking for was "some" cosmetics that target men, not "lots". They do exist, but they are a minuscule fraction of the cosmetic market.
It is still very rare for men to use cosmetics today. It is not "quite common", not by a long shot.
Re:They're not protecting you (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean the cosmetics companies can make adds and show these people without using any of their stuff. Also it is applied by professional makeup attest. Using the correct lighting and angles to hide imperfections.
Find a skinny girl (one with anorexia will work best because they are already a skeleton, you can always build up not down) Pad up the right places and put layers of makeup and there you have an unrealistic image of the cultures version of a beautiful woman used to sell a product.
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If you look at Websites comparing photos of models before and after digital retouching, you'll start to see how dangerous this can be. It's not just airbrushing out a blemish once in a while, but deleting the evidence of the existence of major body structures. It's physically impossible to look like a published photo of a model. (I've tried to look for good before-and-after examples, but unfortunately, contemporary fashion photography is frequently NSFW, so I had to stop.) There are also frequent cases of n
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Here are a couple:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1265676/Britney-Spears-releases-airbrushed-images-digitally-altered-versions.html [dailymail.co.uk]
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/photo-alteration-analysis/?intcid=story_ribbon&pid=2550&viewall=true [wired.com]
Re:They're not protecting you (Score:5, Insightful)
They're protecting millions of impressionable young girls who might be exposed to these ads.
Actually, they're protecting against fraudulent advertising. If I'm looking at an add for mascara, then I should expect that the model is wearing the mascara, and that the effects of the mascara aren't being modified beyond that of the mascara itself.
It's like an ad for a car, where the car has been photoshopped to look nicer. That's not actually the car!
Yes, someone else above is arguing that makeup itself is essentially real-life photoshopping, but then that is kind of the point. If the makeup is working properly, then the advertisements shouldn't need more photoshopping. How am I to evaluate the effectiveness or worth of the makeup, if the makeup's effects are muddled with other effects?
Re:Count on the NADs (Score:5, Insightful)
(please think about it for a few minutes before modding me down)
New invention (Score:5, Funny)
I'm creating an analog version of Photoshop for beauty enhancement. I'm kicking around 3 names for it right now: 1) Flugrup, 2) Snibb, and 3) Makeup.
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I'm creating an analog version of Photoshop for beauty enhancement. I'm kicking around 3 names for it right now: 1) Flugrup, 2) Snibb, and 3) Makeup.
What... is any person wearing them a merchandise? (did the economic crisis evolve bad enough that the slavery was reinstated?)
Really... don't you really see any difference between wearing makeup and deceptive advertising of a product?
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They use Photoshop to enhance images, not actual people. The words you're looking for are "paintbrush" and "pencil".
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analog version of Photoshop? Oh, yes, back in the day we called it
4) Darkroom
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Since when did cosmetics, and most especially the advertisements thereof, have anything to do with reality? They are like real life photoshop.
Now they'll just gimp the models in the photos (Score:5, Funny)
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... using a crowbar. That will make photo shoots a lot more entertaining.
Adobe eight times (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Adobe eight times (Score:5, Informative)
The actual ruling uses terms such as "post production techniques" as the catch all term.
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Probably because nobody in the professional advertising world (the people who make up the NAD) is using anything other than Photoshop.
Re:Adobe eight times (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe... the name "photoshop" has become so ubiquitous that it has come to be synonymous with "computer aided photo manipulation". It is not uncommon for brand names to infiltrate culture so successfully that the trademarked brand name ceases to be relevant.
I suggest that you take a sharpie and a post-it note and write yourself a reminder to google this phenomenon. If that sounds like too much of a headache, take an aspirin and maybe tivo a documentary on it.
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Don't forget to xerox the post-it note, and have a kleenex handy.
Re:Adobe eight times (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe... the name "photoshop" has become so ubiquitous that it has come to be synonymous with "computer aided photo manipulation". It is not uncommon for brand names to infiltrate culture so successfully that the trademarked brand name ceases to be relevant.
I suggest that you take a sharpie and a post-it note and write yourself a reminder to google this phenomenon. If that sounds like too much of a headache, take an aspirin and maybe tivo a documentary on it.
I once heard a woman say that she was googling in her refrigerator for ketchup. I wanted to ask her if she photoshops her face before she goes out.
Government Regulations Ruin My Business Model! (Score:5, Funny)
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Obligatory Conan analogy:
Britney Spears is to 115 lbs of energy as Christina Aguilera is to 115 lbs of clown whore make up.
Re:Government Regulations Ruin My Business Model! (Score:5, Informative)
Product photography (Score:2)
I'd be fine with this. The burger you get at the counter doesn't look anything like the ones in the ads or on the poster in the store, clearly misleading. Whether a *law* needs to be added into the mix is a whole other matter, and one I'd rather not see enacted.
Re:Product photography (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you won't get individual burger chains voluntarily making their ads look like crap (it won't improve sales but it will make their competitors look better), the same goes with cosmetics companies, et al. Voluntary compliance simply won't happen.
Ok, what about the watchdog? Well, as the FCC found out when trying to impose rulings on network neutrality, the courts regard watchdogs as being not much more than mere advisory panels. In short, if a company took a watchdog to court, claiming that Congress had ruled these kinds of deceptive advertising to be non-protected Commercial Speech that they had First Amendment protections to be as deceptive as they damn well felt like, the company would almost certainly win.
Which means that if you honestly believe that there's a limit to the acceptable level of deception, Congress has to have some involvement. It needn't be a full-blown law, and that would likely also fail as UnConstitutional, but there has to be something that is at that level which clearly denotes that there is a difference between protected commercial speech (satire/parody, comedic representation, figurative representation, et al) and actual attempts to deceive a customer into buying something that never existed. And, no, what the US currently has is obviously not enough, or the cosmetics companies would be up the proverbial creek without paddle (or indeed canoe) via lemon laws. The product is, after all, "defective" when compared with what it's sold as. They aren't and the watchdog didn't even bother using such laws, showing the laws have no value or significance.
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Re:Product photography (Score:5, Insightful)
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The difference is what's being advertised. NAD has long said, iirc, that if you are advertising a product than the product must appear unaltered if it appears in the advertisement. So cereal ads, notorious for splashing in a bowl of milk, had to be the same cereal out of a box that would be sold in stores. The milk, bowl, spoons, and everything else could be fake, because those weren't what the advert was for. So, milk got replaced by glue and water, because it has that better shine and texture.
Burger joint
Burger King was my first thought too (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, when I see a picture of a burger covering the entire front window of Burger King, I want a burger that big. And for $2 too!
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They could take a burger that was made in the shop, spray it with some kind of preservative / sealant, and put it out on display. I've seen this done in cafeterias. Then you know that, what you see, is what you're gonna get.
Of course, they don't want you to see this . . .
What is that "Crunchy Frog" on the menu . . . ?
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They're photshopping. Or at least they were recently, I think they got caught. This spring I think it was they put up the pictures in the window of the new triple stacker burgers, compared to the double stacker. One day while waiting at the drive-thru I looked carefully and realized the top buns were identical. (sesame seed placement the same) Closer inspection showed the top and bottom of the double and triple stacker were pixel-for-pixel identical, they appear to have started with a triple stacker and
Re:Burger King was my first thought too (Score:5, Insightful)
If that alone were just allowable justification for manipulating ads, then they would be allowed to put a note somewhere in the ad (just as the mascara ad has done) to make sure that "every reasonable person knows this is BS".
In the case of the food, I am paying cash in advance at window 1 for what's in the picture on the glass. That's what I should be reasonably able to expect to receive at window 2. Now yes, everyone that has any experience with fast food restaurants knows this isn't how it works, but that's due to experience, not due to reasonable assumption. Take someone from another country that has never been to a fast food joint and see how they cry foul, "that looks very different than the picture in the window!" Just because you're used to how certain groups reliably false-advertise doesn't make it an acceptable behavior.
Just because you're used to someone trying to deceive you it doesn't mean they're not actually engaging in deceptive behavior.
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Depends on the microscope they used. Seriously, though, there is nothing at the moment that prohibits deceptive advertising and the watchdog would likely lose if any actual ban on any piece of advertising got challenged in court. The situation is currently futile and will remain so until all branches (SCOTUS included) uniformly agree that selling a product that doesn't exist is not "artistic license". (The view of courts in the past is that it is and therefore it is protected speech.)
Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:5, Informative)
I do wear light makeup on special occasions, but during the week at work I just don't bother. I use a clear combo gel/powder with sunscreen called MagicX instead of foundation on "bad skin days." That's all I need, even though the cosmetic industry thinks I need to have twenty different products on my skin daily. I splurge on good lotions and night treatments, but because I do that, I don't need makeup - or photoshop - to have a nice looking face.
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Shockingly, a pattern of frequent mild radiation burns doesn't really do one's skin much good.
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Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:4, Insightful)
A guy's perspective here:
Makeup looks bad. I mean, ugh. Horrifyingly bad. I can't count how many times I looked a girl's makeup-caked face in high school and felt like throwing up.
Unless you're a professional makeup artist. Those people know to use the absolute minimum, and exactly how to get the effect they want.
those girls don't know how to use it... (Score:3)
I had a female friend who knew how to use makeup. I could watch her put it on, and when she was done I could look from fairly close and not be able to see anything that stood out as makeup.
Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm also the carrier of two X chromosomes, and no, I'm not ugly. We do exist, but since it would be asinine to point out what gender you are in every post, this silly idea that there are no women on /. continues.
Anyway, I wear light makeup most days I go to work because it simply looks more professional to do so. I mean some powder and mascara and lip gloss, not really heavy makeup. I'd love to go without but until that becomes the norm I'll probably continue to conform to what is the minimum standard on t
Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:5, Funny)
My God.
We're talking about makeup on Slashdot.
If there was any better indication that we are heading toward the End of Days, I don't know what it is.
Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:5, Funny)
Ignore him, he hasn't had a date, in, well, he's never had a date.
Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/322/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Young women don't need makeup.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking from experience, it's more interesting to pick (1) and (3). Not necessarily in a good way.
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Were you not an anonymous coward, and actually participated in the group, instead of taking potshots like an angry monkey throwing poo, you'd know me, and that I'm married, with a teenage daughter, who's also a geek. But thanks for playing.
There's two types of participants in this forum; those in the business, and those who buy goods and services from us with their burger king paychecks. I'm in the former group. It's not hard to guess which group you're in.
Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather marketers be over-restricted than under-restricted. Talk about lying: just the other day I got an ad in the form of a fake rebate check. It looks just like a real check, of course, and it says "REBATE CHECK" in big letters and "This is not a check" in very small letters. WTF? Can I sell a pill that says "CURES CANCER!" in big letters and then "Does not cure cancer" in small letters just below it?
(I'm not kidding. I can post a pic later if anyone wants to see proof.)
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For simple ease of sorting, and avoidance of check-washers and the like, the checks that people actually use are fairly heavily standardized(either the slightly smaller human-use ones or the 1/3 of an 8.5x11 machine print ones, with MICR codes in all the right places, printed security features,
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Funny story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Inland_Revenue_v_Haddock [wikipedia.org]
Re:Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems reasonable enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, on that basis, it's hard to imagine much of the advertising industry being left(Note, this does not represent criticism of this basis, no not at all). So much of advertising consists of more or less blatantly false images and video, followed by a tiny text disclaimer.
As for the concerns mentioned at the end of TFS, I'm not sure I see the problem: this [alphaila.com] is arguably even more divorced from reality than cosmetics advertising, and the battle over pre-renders being pimped as "in engine"(recorded at 1FPS, with known-unusably-bugggy effects enabled with command line switches, on $10,000 workstation, played back at 30FPS, or just created by importing our highest resolution art assets into 3DSMAX...) in gameplay advertising has gone on for ages. As for 'photographer's own work', unless you assert that you, as a photographer, take 'pictures that objectively represent reality' rather than 'aesthetically pleasing pictures', why would photoshop be any worse than using a good lens or a low-noise sensor? In photojournalism, photochopping can be a serious problem; but in photography as art, you aren't making a truth claim, so it's pretty hard to lie...
As voluntary standards by a private industry body, this seems like an unimpeachable step. The issue would get a bit more dicey were the state to step in, you'd have to adjudicate the line between expressive free speech and commercial fraud through deception; but if the marketweasels want to clean up a small part of their slime trail, all the better...
Food (Score:2)
If they do this to food, it kills the industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Which of course is why the pictures of food NEVER look like what they serve you. On the plus side, you wouldn't really want to eat what they took pictures of.
Re:If they do this to food, it kills the industry (Score:5, Informative)
Fakes are only allowed for the food not being sold advertised.
Motor oil could be used as syrup when advertising pancakes, but not when advertising maple syrup.
Adobe still allowed! (Score:3)
Note that Adobe is still allowed to Photoshop ads for Photoshop, since that's what they're selling
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Well that's only fair I guess, if the cosmetics companies are still allowed to put make-up on the magazines.
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true, but the before and after comparison capabilities arent nearly as strong of a selling point now that they are the same picture.
This should extend to cell phone adverts (Score:3)
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There goes most of Apple's advertising campaign.
"or a photographer's own works?" (Score:2)
I'm not sure what we're alluding to. Does this mean that we'll see art that actually looks like something?
Waste of time (Score:2)
If there are people alive today who don't know that they should be skeptical about advertising, they probably aren't watching American cosmetics ads anyway.
I can't see I say a problem with this... (Score:3)
The end product of cosmetics is an improved appearance. If an ad tries to sell cosmetics based on an appearance that the cosmetics themselves cannot deliver, that's fraud.
Fraud (Score:2)
Misleading advertising should be illegal anyhow. I don't see why this group should have to specifically ban it.
Photo Editing Freelance jobs just took a hit! (Score:3)
A few years ago in the UK they ran a Dove soap advert with real women. They ran it just about everywhere. After a week of looking at those real women on my morning commute, I longed for the fake photo shopped lie. I don't expect pictures of beer gut real men on the cover of men's health either. Real is grim, lets live the lie
GIMP (Score:3)
Why not just make the 'notification' bigger? (Score:3)
Instead of trashing all post-production work, which could put a lot of people out of a job, why not just change the mandatory notification size? Kinda like they did for cigarette packages: a minimum of 50% of the front and back packaging must be a health warning advert (at least, that's how it is here in Canada).
Make it so they have to describe exactly what they did (e.g., altered skin tone, corrected blemishes and enhanced eyelashes, lips, nose and bust size) and legislate that they must make the size of the description a minimum percentage of the total advertisement size (maybe 30%?) and use font size scaled to the advert size instead of using text so small one has to pull out the magnifying glass to read it on a 55" HD plasma. That way people can see clearly for themselves which ones are the incredible lying fuckwads, and which ones aren't. Wouldn't that be nice?
Well...we made the tobacco companies comply with this, I don't see why we can't do so with beauty product advertisements...
Aren't all digital photos post-processed? (Score:3)
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, woman that use more than a minimal amount, tend to look worse. Makeup in almost all cases is *way* too obvious.
It does tell me something of their thought processes, so I'm not too bothered. it's a useful metric.
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"She that paints her face thinks of her tail" - Ben Franklin.
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Funny)
Women's use of cosmetics bordens with pure fraud. They're faking themselves better looks than they really have to fraud men and thus try to gain money, power or anything else for their own advantage. It just isn't defined as fraud because the scheme has been going on for so long, but in reality it's the same. They're advertising something which they don't have and take advantage of men.
Don't worry, that all stops once you're married.
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Women's use of cosmetics bordens with pure fraud. They're faking themselves better looks than they really have...
So? Stop buying them...
Right... actually something in you post suggest you aren't getting them for free, so you start blaming the "high prices" and "misleading advertising".
I know that they may look a bit alien/outlandish for you now, but maybe it will get better if you'll stop treating them as "burgers to be bought" and see them more as human beings?
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Insightful)
Ban clothes too! All they're doing is adding color to otherwise rather monotone skin color.
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually agree with this. I don't use clothes at home either (or when browsing Slashdot), and if the weather permits, why should I need to use them outside either?
Hm, good question. Let me think about that for a while...
Besides, we can all agree that it's just nice to see good looking naked people.
That's why most people shouldn't be allowed to walk around naked.
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Yes, just like the Concealed Weapon License, we need an Exposed Weapon License!
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Informative)
You don't want to see me naked.
--
BMO "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" - Airplane
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Besides, we can all agree that it's just nice to see good looking naked people.
Should I link to goatse? Or would you propose to euthanise bad looking people? Or lock them out of sight?
BTW: what about the eye of the beholder?
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think we should ban cosmetics completely (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, but it still doesn't change the fact that cosmetics are practically real life version of Photoshop, and both are used to fake stuff.
Well, on the same line: everybody in this world would need to wear a uniform - after all, different clothing are faking the stuff underneath. Should I continue?
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doesn't that logic actually suggest that everyone should go naked unless absolutely necessary for for temperature reasons?
So, have you stopped taking a shower? (Score:3)
After all, by your logic, cleaning yourself up is "fake" as well. Humans don't naturally smell "clean" without the application of soap and water. So, if you're going to argue that women who use makeup are "faking stuff", since they don't really look that way naturally, by the same logic, so are people who take a bath. Or brush their teeth. Or trim their toenails. Or cut their hair.
Not everyone wants to go around looking and smelling like this guy [torrentfreak.com].
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Weat argument.
The picture in an ad says, this is what our product will do for you.
If you enhance the picture, you're lying about what the product can do.
It's the equivalent of a Ford Taurus ad saying it can do 0 to 60 in 1.7 seconds.
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Yet somehow they manage to make those photograph purely from real items. It must be some kind of magic. Or, as Arthur C. Clarke put it; "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.".
FWIW, without Photoshop, most glamour photo's would actually make the girls look far more ugly than they are in real life. The brutal clarity of a still frame is not something we're used to seeing in reality.
Re:How silly (Score:4, Insightful)
I can refute that pretty well. With good, soft, even lighting, a flattering pose, and attention paid to the facial shape and blemishes of the model, a good photographer can make just about anyone "pretty." Add in some professional make-up and hair work, and you're well on your way to making someone look far different than they do in real life.
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Re:How silly (Score:5, Insightful)
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Self Regulation (Score:2)
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There is RAW data, but this is not a viewable image until it's been post processed. Even a JPG directly from the camera has already been processed to include color shifts, sharpening changes, and relative lighting.
Those affect the picture as a whole. They don't lengthen eyelashes, "airbrush" blemishes, whiten eyes and teeth, add shine to lips, remove stray strands of hair and that sort of thing.
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Advertising is a fantasy.
This is what this law intends to fix.
Get over yourself. Nobody needs that kind of help.
Wrong, if such advertising wouldn't work for a vast majority of the population, companies wouldn't use it.