A Senate bill to regulate sweepstakes and deceptive mailings could be marked up as early as next week, according to a staffer for Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the measure’s author.
In remarks before the Direct Marketing Association’s Government Affairs Conference yesterday in Washington, DC, Kirk Walder said the Governmental Affairs Committee has a mark up session slated for May 13, and it’s likely that the sweepstakes bill will be taken up.
Focus has been on the sweepstakes standards the bill creates, but the legislation also addresses tightening restrictions on government look-alike mailings and gives the U.S. Postal Service stronger enforcement power against deceptive mailings through beefed-up subpoena and injunctive authority.
The sweepstakes portion will not be so detailed as to mandate the point size of the type used in the piece, Walder said, but the contest’s sponsor would have to be made clear, as will that no purchase is necessary to enter. And, recipients wouldn’t be allowed to be told that they’ve won if they haven’t. “The rules must be put in a fashion easy to find, read and understand,” Walder said.
Collins is currently looking at refining the bill, possibly in a way that will be more friendly to direct marketers, but Walder said that those elements would be in any final version. “We think we can produce tough legislation, but fair legislation,” he said, adding that the measure is not intended to harm the industry.
Asked why the sweepstakes problems couldn’t be addressed through existing law on deceptive advertising, Walder agreed that Collins’ bill was targeting the same basic elements as that law, but “we felt it was necessary to put it in fairly specific terms.”
H. Robert Wientzen, the DMA’s president and CEO, noted that the issue affects even direct marketers who don’t use sweepstakes because so many mailing lists come from them.
In his remarks opening the conference on Wednesday, Wientzen said that the DMA “could support the establishment of national standards for sweepstakes promotions as long as they don’t prescribe advertising copy and placement that would run afoul of the First Amendment.”
He added, “If you’re using sweeps you would be well advised to play scrupulously by the rules, to stay far from the edge and not to push the edge.”
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