S.C. Johnson & Sons has been asked to modify claims in an ad for its Oust Air Sanitizer that suggest that competitor Lysol is ineffective.
The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus made the recommendation last week after reviewing a TV spot brought to its attention by Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of Lysol.
The ad features a woman describing the odors in the bathroom used by her children. She says, “The boy’s bathroom definitely has that public bathroom aroma. Lysol was more for the surfaces. Even if you wash, the smell lingers, so I tried Oust,” NAD said.
NAD said it found that the commercial implied that Lysol would not have an effect on odors in the air.
“Lysol will kill the bacteria on surfaces where it is sprayed (i.e., the source of the odors), which in turn has the effect of reducing, if not eliminating, the odors,” NAD said in its decision.
NAD concluded that since bacteria on the surface is often the source for odors, it is not accurate to claim that Lysol will not remove odors in the air. NAD recommended that the commercial be discontinued or modified to avoid conveying this unsupported message.
S.C. Johnson said that it would take NAD’s concerns into consideration in future advertising.
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