Cases before the Fairness Commission: accuracy of an advertising statement
Anyone who makes a claim in an advertisement must be able to prove that it is correct, even if it is not defined by law. Otherwise, the claim is unfair.
A consumer was annoyed by the statement of a nuclear power plant, which spread the claim in a radio commercial that it generates CO2-free electricity. This claim was misleading. Viewed as a whole, nuclear power produces twice as much CO2 as hydroelectric power plants. The respondent argued that this was political and not commercial communication and therefore did not fall within the scope of the Swiss Fairness Commission, SLK. However, the Second Chamber of the SLK accepted the complaint because electricity is indeed a commercial good and is also marketed accordingly. It did not agree with the opinion of the AKW, which argued that it was not possible to check the correctness of the criticized statement because it was not defined by law. The SLK disagreed. It could not be that advertisers could use this argumentation to circumvent, so to speak, the requirement for the correctness of a statement. In its decision, it wrote: "The respondent is obliged to prove the accuracy of its own advertising statement. It has not met this burden of proof." Accordingly, the Board considered the statement in question to be incorrect and thus unfair within the meaning of Art. 3 lit. b UCA.
