Harmful
advertising for
Chocolate bars.
Harmful
advertising for
Chocolate bars.
from
Are chocolate bar collection campaigns anti-competitive because they exploit the commercial inexperience of children and young people? The Federal Court of Justice has now provided an answer to this question.
Advertising campaign on chocolate bars
The subject of the dispute was an advertising campaign on chocolate bars (including “Lion”, “KitKat” and “Nuts”). A collection point was printed on the packaging of each bar. For 25 of these collection points, you were supposed to receive a voucher from Amazon worth EUR 5.
The Federal Association of Consumer Organizations considered this advertising to be anti-competitive, as the advertising campaign exploited the collecting enthusiasm of children and young people in an unlawful manner.
Judgment of the Federal Court of Justice
However, the Federal Court of Justice took a different view in its ruling of 17.07.2008 – Ref. I ZR 160/05 and dismissed the action brought by the consumer advice center. Although such collection campaigns could in principle be anti-competitive if they are not manageable for children and young people and therefore exploit their inexperience, this was not the case here. In the case of the chocolate bar promotion, the young people were able to sufficiently determine the economic significance, the value for money and the financial burden. Therefore, no inexperience of children and young people was exploited here, according to the judges in Karlsruhe.
Conclusion
Advertising that is aimed at children and young people in particular is subject to even stricter standards, meaning that particular caution is required when designing it. In particular, the EU Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices is likely to lead to stricter rules. The directive has not yet been taken into account in the above-mentioned decision.
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