ABC/Randy Holmes(NEW YORK) — We’ve all seen the DirecTV commercials with Rob Lowe, Creepy Rob Lowe, Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe, Peaked in High School Rob Lowe…you get the picture.
Well, it turns out those ads may have been somewhat misleading, according to the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ National Advertising Division, which has recommended that DirecTV discontinue some of the claims it makes in its commercials.
A competitor from the cable world, Comcast, had challenged several of DirecTV’s claims, including that DirecTV offers 99-percent signal reliability and up to 1080p picture quality, and is number one in customer satisfaction over all cable TV providers.
Following a review, NAD recommends, among other things, that DirecTV modify its 1080p claim to disclose the “limited programming on which resolutions of 1080p is currently available.”
Addressing Lowe’s famous closing line in the ads, NAD determined that the statement, “Don’t be like this me, get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV,” “reasonably conveyed a comparative and unsupported superiority message, and recommended that in this context the claim be discontinued.”
DirecTV says it will appeal NAD’s findings to the National Advertising Review Board. It maintains in a statement to the NAD that it “continues to believe that the various Rob Lowe advertisements are so outlandish and exaggerated that no reasonable consumer would believe that the statements being made by the alter-ego characters are comparative or need to be substantiated.”
A DirecTV exec has told the Los Angeles Times it had already planned to retire the Rob Lowe campaign.
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