Damage Control: Limiting the Fall-Out from Deceptive Advertising
Katherine L. Twomey, John G. Knight and Lisa S. McNeill
Otago University
INTRODUCTION
Deceptive advertising typically generates a highly adverse public reaction (Fry and McDougall, 1974; Greyser and Bauer, 1966). In this article, the authors examine how highly respected company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to recover from humiliation caused by two 14-year-old schoolgirls whose science-fair project revealed that GSK’s television advertisements were deceptive. The authors discuss how GSK faced the dilemma by attempting to recover trust with a televised apology, and they derive lessons for practitioners in the context...