The FTC has ordered Sunmark to pull its matchmaking advertising campaign because the ad misleads consumers into thinking that the company has a higher marriage rate than it can prove. The ads amounted to false advertising, under Section 5 of the FTC Act.

Sunmark, which operates a matchmaking service, ran advertisements in national magazines in which it claimed that it was responsible for the marriages of 3,478 of its members. In fact, only about 950 of its members actually married other members; 1600 members were married to third parties not related to the site. Another 800 members included in the count were dating, but had not actually married. The ads, which ran in magazines for 2 months, suggested that Sunmark’s matchmaking rate was 8%, when in fact it was only 4.7%.

Practice Note: To rectify the blunder, Sunmark could have placed a disclaimer in its advertisement, noting that of the 2,550 actual marriages, only 950 marriages were member-to-member. Simply stating that “some” marriages were not member-to-member, however, would have been insufficient. Indeed, the FTC cited another matchmaking company for failing to provide the actual number of non-member marriages, even though it placed a disclaimer in its ad.

This entry was posted by Tsan Abrahamson on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 at 10:27 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.