What the FTC Considers a Claim

Three ways ordinary copy becomes a regulated claim

The first is quotation. A line lifted from a customer email and set on a web page is an endorsement, and it must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the person who wrote it. It may not be presented out of context or reworded so as to distort that person's opinion or experience. Nor may it convey any representation that would be deceptive if the advertiser made it directly.²

The second is a connection the reader would not expect. Where a connection between the endorser and the seller might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, and is not reasonably expected by the audience, it must be fully disclosed.³ The Commission's examples include a blogger given a free product, an employee of a manufacturer posting on a message board, a paid spokesperson posting on social media, and consumers rewarded with points toward prizes.³ A celebrity paid the ordinary fee to endorse a food product needs no disclosure, because the audience expects it.³

The third is an adjective. Unqualified general environmental benefit claims are difficult to interpret and likely to convey a wide range of meanings, and the Commission advises marketers not to make them. A qualifying phrase must be clear and prominent and must limit the claim to the specific benefit that can be substantiated.⁴ Its examples are uncomfortably ordinary. They include a brand name using eco-friendly, a claim that packaging is greener than the previous packaging when only its weight fell, and a fuel efficiency gain of one tenth of one percent called improved.⁴

Origin claims, like the wording fixed on a regulated label, work the same way. An unqualified Made in USA label carries three requirements. Final assembly or processing must occur in the United States, all significant processing must occur there, and all or virtually all ingredients or components must be made and sourced there.⁵

Who is liable, and why that changes the editing

Advertisers are liable for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements and for failing to disclose material connections. Endorsers may also be liable for statements made in the course of their endorsements.²

That second sentence is why the disclosure question cannot be left to the person who wrote the post. Both parties carry exposure, so both need the same document to work from, and the document is the copy.

What is checkable on the page

An editor cannot decide whether a claim is substantiated. That is a question about evidence held by the business and assessed by its own counsel. What an editor can do is produce findings, and four of them cover most of the ground.

The first is an inventory of every sentence that asserts a fact about the product, separated from the sentences that merely describe it. The second is a list of every quoted or attributed statement, recording where it came from and whether permission exists. The third is a check that each required disclosure sits with the claim it qualifies rather than in a footer, since the guides ask for disclosure of the connection itself.³ The fourth is a consistency pass across the whole family of material, because a claim worded three ways on a package, a web page, and a sell sheet is three claims.

That last check is copy editing as Editors Canada defines it, covering correctness, accuracy, consistency, and completeness.⁶ It is also where most of the exposure actually sits, since the version a regulator reads is rarely the version the legal team approved.

Where EditFast stops

We do not decide whether a claim is substantiated, whether a disclosure is adequate, or whether an advertisement complies. Those determinations belong to the business and its advisors, and they arrive with the copy.

EditFast works on marketing collateral and website copy at the level of wording, consistency, and clarity, and reports what does not match the approved version. Everything a client sends is treated in confidence, including draft campaigns, substantiation files, and correspondence.

The most useful thing a marketing team can supply an editor is the list of which sentences legal has already approved. Without it, every sentence looks the same on the page, and the two that matter get edited like the rest.