LEGAL PREDICTIONS FOR 2002
The legal minds at Hall Dickler Kent Goldstein & Wood, New York City, offer up the following predictions for the marketing industry in 2002:
– Holding companies will continue mad dashes for revenue through acquisitions. Independent agencies feeling the crunch of reduced media spending should hold out as long as they can until the economy turns (which hopefully will happen by the end of the third quarter) and buyers enter another feeding frenzy.
– Federal Trade Commission chairman Timothy Muris will run an activist operation targeting telemarketing, privacy issues, health and diet claims, incentive marketing, children’s advertising, and e-commerce. His years as the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection give him more experience regulating marketing practices than any past chairman.
As new cases are brought to the FTC, we’ll see their net drag in more of the economic chain that may have supported alleged deceptive practices, including media, credit card companies, suppliers, fulfillment houses, and even individual executives.
-The National Association of Attorneys General will continue to attack the marketing industry after victories against tobacco and direct-mail companies. It is difficult to fight 15 or more attorneys general who conspire to target an advertiser or to stop an advertising practice through discretionary prosecution. During 2002, we’ll see more of the same, although it’s difficult to imagine whom or what they’ll target.
-Despite adoption of the Euro, a contiguous European marketing venue won’t happen in 2002. Advertising will be as local as ever, or foreign marketers will simply ignore pan-European directives. Don’t worry too much about the Data Protective Directive or others on direct selling, promotions, or children’s advertising.
-There will be more direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs, and the FDA and FTC will watch more closely as drug companies move to couponing, direct mail fulfillment, and the like. It may prove to be a prescription for disaster.
-The FTC may amend its Telemarketing Sales Rule to prevent the transfer of consumer credit card information from one vendor to another without the consumer’s express consent. That begs the question: With all the ways consumers can already zap telemarketers, why make it more difficult for legitimate telemarketers to utilize effective techniques?
