Cleaning products
Dreft says he feels attacked by a campaign from competitor Finish, which calls its tablets ‘unbeatable against stubborn stains’. The French-language newspaper L’Echo reports that the brand has gone to court.
For Dreft (owned by Procter & Gamble), the slogan amounts to deceptive comparative publicity and it therefore asked the Brussels court to ban the campaign, writes L’Echo. Finish’s lawyer (Reckitt Benckiser), Tanguy De Haan, points out that the campaign does not mention any Finish competitor by name. He also refers to a similar lawsuit in France, where the judge ruled in the same sentence in February last year.
Comparative advertising, in which the competitor’s product is mentioned by name or implicitly, is indeed permitted in Belgium, but under certain conditions. The advertising may not, among other things, be misleading or disparage the competition. In this case, the Dreft dishwasher tablets are not mentioned by name, but the publicity does say that the Finish tablets are ‘unbeatable’. This implies that they also work better than those of Dreft, the best-known brand in Belgium.
‘It is typical for these types of products that everyone constantly exaggerates. The consumer is used to that,” De Haan told L’Echo. According to him, there is no evidence in the file that consumers see a comparison in the publicity.
The Brussels judge could resolve the conflict by trying both tablets and seeing which brand gives the best results against stubborn stains, but that is apparently not the intention. A court decision will follow later.