While DirecTV’s ads with actor Rob Lowe might tickle our funny bones during commercial breaks, it turns out that not everyone is happy with them. Comcast complained about them to an ad industry agency, which has officially recommended that DirecTV pull the ads.
The Council of Better Business Bureaus’ National Advertising Deivision ruled Tuesday that the satellite provider should pull the ads due to claims about their service in the commercials. in the ads, Lowe says that DirecTV has “99.9 percent signal reliability,” “1080p picture quality and Dolby 5.1” and is “the undisputed leader in sports,” among other claims.
At the end, Lowe points to a weird version of himself and says, “Don’t be like this me. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV.” The odd characters have included Awkward Rob Lowe, Meathead Rob Lowe and Crazy Hairy Rob Lowe.
NAD looked into each of these claims and decided that, even though they are good ads, the advertiser still has to back up the claims. They listed each commercial, and determined that many of the claims should be pulled.
“NAD determined that the claim, ‘Don’t be like this me. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV,’ when it appears at the end of a commercial which compares attributes of DirecTV to attributes of cable reasonably conveyed a comparative and unsupported superiority message, and recommended that in this context the claim be discontinued,” NAD said.
DirecTV plans to appeal the ruling to the National Advertising Review Board. The company “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,” it said in a statement to NAD.
screenshot from DirecTV YouTube Video