The advertising agency’s anti-fraud group has a penalty box for wrongdoers, but AdAge reports that the Trustworthy Accountability of National Advertisers has yet to deploy it. AdAge notes that this is despite an expectation that agency world will lose $6.3 billion over fraud claims this year.
TAG’s CEO Jane Woolley tells the trade publication they may be able to write in a name or two within the next six months and says the group is “making amazing progress.” The shame forum was announced in November.
Calling out bad behavior is nothing new, but its impact has yet to be determined. The FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion, for example, routinely writes up drug companies for a series of violations that feel almost boilerplate and include transgressions such as minimization or exclusion of risk information and making claims that exceed approved indications.
Findings by researchers at Sweden’s University of Lund also indicate that self-regulation may be little more than ink on a page: They found that between 2012 and 2014 pharma companies violated their own marketing rules around once a week in promotions that ran in the UK and Sweden.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed turning bad behavior into research support by funneling fines for infractions including withholding safety information and marketing for unapproved uses to coffers at the National Institutes of Health.
