AD-ttorneys@law – July 15, 2022 – Advertising, Marketing & Branding

In This Issue:

In This Issue:

• • TINA Investigation Sours on HelloFresh

• • Get Ready for a Bieber Beauty Battle

• • Brave Claims a Mixed Result in Rare Privacy Investigation from
    NAD

• • Product Components Can Undermine—or
    Support—‘Natural’ Claims

• • Check Out Our Latest Blog Posts

TINA Investigation Sours on HelloFresh

America’s #1 food-box provider is deploying dark
patterns, says watchdog

See-Through?

When it comes to ingredients and suppliers, HelloFresh is all
about disclosure. Check out its “Meet our suppliers” page, where the
company claims that “from field to cutting board, our culinary
and sourcing teams work tirelessly to ensure the entire recipe
development process is as environmentally friendly, sustainable,
and delicious as possible.” Beneath this marketing tag is a
list of suppliers and their logos, which varies depending on which
of the 17 countries you’re ordering their service from.
“For us,” the site promises, “where our food comes
from is as important as where it’s going.”

This sort of transparency is surely a selling point for the
company, which operates in a world clogged with fast food, chain
groceries, and conglomerates that might be required to share
nutrition information but mostly remain silent on just where their
raw materials hail from.

But Truth in Advertising, Inc. (TINA), is taking the company to
task for failing on a different kind of disclosure.

Opacity or Mendacity?

According to the watchdog group, HelloFresh is deploying
“dark patterns” to ensnare curious consumers into auto
renewals.

You remember dark patterns, right? We
covered them back in the stone ages (i.e., 2021)—when we
defined them as an “ever-growing, ever-evolving collection of
manipulative web design practices” that include “a number
of design approaches—some are tried-and-true, like
unsubscribe options written in tiny fonts at the bottom of a
marketing email,” while others are deviously novel, such as
“the fake screen…