NAD Rules on Prose’s Challenge of Function of Beauty

The National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs has announced the resolution of a new ‘Fast-Track Swift’ case involving hair care brands Prose and Function of Beauty.
 
Prose brought a challenge to Function's claim that it had “over 110,000 5-star product reviews!” for its Function of Beauty customizable hair care products. NAD recommended that the advertiser discontinue the challenged claim or modify it to tout the number of 5-star reviews it can reliably support.
 
Fast-Track Swift is anexpedited process designed for single-issue advertising cases. According to NAD, the “110,000 5-star product reviews” claim was appropriate for Fast-Track Swift because the issue was limited to whether the advertiser provided a reasonable basis for the claim when it counted reviews in the combined “shampoo and conditioner” category as two separate product reviews, one for shampoo and one for conditioner.
 
NAD determined that at least one reasonable interpretation of the claim “over 110,000 5-star product reviews!” is the express message that consumers have submitted 110,000 distinct reviews. Nothing in the context of the claim, or the claim itself alerts consumers that its count of 5-star reviews is based on counting a single review of shampoo and conditioner as two product reviews. Nor did the advertiser provide a reasonable basis to support the claim that it has over 110,000 product reviews for “shampoo and conditioner” because reviewers had no mechanism to rate the products separately.
 
In its advertiser's statement, Function stated that while it “disagrees with NAD's determination that [it] lacked a reasonable basis for its claim, we welcome NAD's guidance in this area.”