The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2024
Marketing Worldwide Ecuador promised to stop slimming ads — and never reported stopping
Apr 2024: Ecuador's SCE fined Marketing Worldwide $945,472.50 — it broke the 2019 cessation promise over Colageterna and Helix ads.
Marketing Worldwide Ecuador S.A. · 2024-04-11
What happened
Marketing Worldwide Ecuador S.A., a TV direct-response seller, was fined $945,472.50 by Ecuador's Superintendencia de Competencia Económica (SCE) for 'unfair practices of deception and aggressive harassment' in the advertising of its products Colageterna and Helix.
The story hinges on a broken promise. In 2019 the company accepted a cessation commitment before the SCE: it admitted the infringements, paid a $65,674.63 remediation amount, withdrew the advertised material, ran a competition audit, adopted a compliance programme and agreed to file semi-annual reports on the advertising of its products.
When the deadline passed, the SCE said the company never submitted the verification to show it had complied with the obligations of the cessation commitment. The 2019 resolution had already established its responsibility for a serious infringement; the 2024 sanction of $945,472.50 was the consequence of failing to honour the deal.
Why it happened
- The 2019 cessation commitment required verification reports the company never delivered.
- The slimming-product ads for Colageterna and Helix were found to be deceptive and aggressive, and the withdrawal order was not documented as complied with.
- Accepting a commitment and then not reporting on it converts a remediation into a second, larger fine.
The lesson
A regulator's cessation commitment is not a pardon — it is a contract. Sign it, take the money, and skip the reporting, and the penalty that follows is the expensive version of the same offence.
Aftermath
The SCE applied the $945,472.50 sanction through its national unfair-practices investigation office, on the basis of the non-compliance with the 2019 resolution. The case shows the cost of promising a compliance programme and then failing to prove it ran.
Sources
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
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