Typical results
results not typical / individual results may vary / representative results / case study claims
Typical results is the standard a testimonial has to meet before it can be advertised. The FTC Endorsement Guides treat a specific result as a claim about what customers will generally achieve, and the Commission tested the usual disclaimers. Neither one reduced that impression, so a caveat does not fix an unrepresentative case study.
Start with what the Guides are. The Guides in this part represent administrative interpretations of laws enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, applied to the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising. Their first rule is the obvious one: endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser. The rule that catches people is the second one. A testimonial about results on a key attribute of a product will likely be read as representative of what consumers will generally achieve with the advertised product in actual, albeit variable, conditions of use.
The familiar caveat does not solve this, and that is a tested finding rather than an opinion. The Commission ran advertisements whose testimonials clearly and prominently carried either a short disclaimer or a stronger one telling readers they were unlikely to have similar results. Neither disclosure adequately reduced the communication that the experiences depicted are generally representative.
The worked example in the Guides is worth reading slowly. A heat pump company runs endorsements from three people whose monthly utility bills went down by $100, $125, and $150, respectively. Nothing about the testimonials is false. The problem is the arithmetic underneath them, because fewer than 20% of purchasers will save $100 or more. The advertisement therefore conveys a saving the advertiser cannot substantiate, and the Guides say plainly that a disclosure of the results not typical kind is insufficient to prevent it from being deceptive.
That leaves two ways out, and the FTC states them in plain words. Have adequate proof to back up the claim that the results shown in the ad are typical, or clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected performance in the circumstances shown in the ad. So the answer is a number, not a caveat. And the burden does not shift to the person who gave the testimonial: an advertiser may be liable for a deceptive endorsement even when the endorser is not liable.
In practice
This runs in both directions. It is the standard your own testimonials page has to meet, and it is the question worth putting to any case study you are shown: is this the typical result, and if not, what is? A firm that has the second number will give it to you. A firm that has only the first one will reach for a caveat, which is exactly the move the Commission tested and found ineffective.
Not the same as
- A disclaimer
- A disclaimer is a sentence added to an advertisement. The standard here is evidence about what customers generally get, and the Guides describe the disclaimer as insufficient on its own.
- Disclosing a material connection
- A separate section covers telling people about a connection between the advertiser and the endorser. That is about who paid. This is about whether the result is representative. Both can apply to the same testimonial.
Why it matters to you
Every proposal you read is built from somebody's best case, and a best case is not evidence of what you will get. The Guides hand you a specific question that separates a representative outcome from a selected one, and they put the work of answering it on whoever is running the advertisement rather than on you.
What to ask or check
- 01Is the result in this case study typical, or the strongest one available?
- 02What is the generally expected outcome for a business like mine, expressed as a number?
- 03How many clients does that best case come out of?
What people get wrong
That adding a line saying results are not typical makes an unrepresentative testimonial acceptable. The Commission tested that wording and a stronger version of it, and reports that neither reduced the impression that the results shown were representative.
Red flags
- A results page with no statement of what an ordinary outcome looks like.
- A caveat doing the work a number should be doing.
- Named wins with no indication of how many clients they came out of.
Who owns it
The advertiser. The Guides place the substantiation on whoever runs the advertisement, and say an advertiser may be liable even when the endorser is not.
Where you will see it
On the results page of almost every marketing firm, and on your own testimonials page.