ABOUT THIS BOOK

How does advertising really work? This thoroughly revised edition of Ivan Preston’s popular classic, The Great American Blow-Up, provides new examples of puffery and deceit in advertising. Preston examines in detail the role of laws and the Federal Trade Commission in ensuring fair representation of goods and services to consumers. In a new concluding chapter, Preston describes and assesses developments in the field of advertising from the mid–1970s to the present.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ivan L. Preston is Journal Communications/Heyse Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has been honored three times by the American Academy of Advertising, most recently by being elected its president. An expert witness and author of numerous articles on advertising law, he is the author of The Tangled Web They Weave: Truth, Falsity, & Advertisers, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Preface

1. I'm the Greatest, Yes Sirree, That's All You'll Ever Hear from Me!

2. Falsity without Deception: As Possible As the Law Says, but Not As Probable

3. Puffery: Used Because It Works, Legalized Because It Doesn't

4. The Roots of Sellerism

5. Warranty: How Much Promise Do You Find in a Promise?

6. Misrepresentation: How Much Lying Do You Find in a Falsehood?

7. Opinion and Value Statements and Puffery: Avoiding Fact and Keeping Sellerism Alive

8. The Federal Trade Commission: Accelerating the Consumerist Trend

9. Reasonable Consumers or Other Consumers? How the FTC Decides

10. The FTC and Puffery: Some Wins and Some Losses in the Fight for Consumerism

11. Additional Kinds of Puffery, Beginning with Obvious Falsity

12. Puffing with Social and Psychological Claims

13. Puffing with Literally Misdescriptive Names

14. Puffing with Mock-Ups

15. Puffery's Immunity Should Be Eliminated

Notes

Table of Cases

Index

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