Five Laws You Should Know Before Doing Business in Ohio

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 15:00:00 -0400

It is said you are not really in business until you get sued. In business you certainly cannot please everyone so the likelihood of a client or customer taking legal action increases as your company expands and takes on more employees. While a lawsuit may be an implicit attainment of success, it is a milestone that can be avoided by knowing the laws of the state(s) your company is registered in.

For Ohio, the Consumer Sales Practice Act of 1972 protects consumers from businesses that take advantage. The Act ensures consumers are not asked to do unfair or deceptive actions for a purchase; the Act makes it illegal for a seller to misrepresent their business, product, service or the price of their transaction; the Act prohibits a seller from taking advantage of those illiterate or mentally disabled. The Act even prohibits sellers from selling a product or service to a consumer they know cannot afford or benefit from the purchase. Lastly, the Act requires sellers to honor guarantees, warranties and protects consumers from deceptive advertising.

When it comes to advertising, here are five laws you should learn and practice from year 1 in business.

Gift Cards – As a small business growing your customer base, you may want to offer gift cards to your customers. Gift cards are a great way to influence a purchase for a buyer unsure of what to get for a friend or loved one, and they are a popular purchase during the holidays to save time. Under Ohio law, a gift card should not have an expiration date less than two years of the date it was issued. For a startup, the risk of this two-year requirement for expiration is the possibility of no longer offering that product or service by the time the gift card is redeemed.
Rain Checks – In the age of social media, startups and entrepreneurs are notorious for offering sales online or as vendors at local events. If your business promotes a sale, you must list specific limitations such as “limited number in stock” or “while supplies last.” Otherwise if the seller runs out of the sale item, the consumer is entitled to a rain check – a ticket that will allow them to purchase the item at the sale price advertised whenever you have the item in stock again.
Prizes – Ohio law prohibits advertising that a consumer has won a prize and then requiring the consumer to pay fees or perform any action to receive the prize. All terms and conditions of the prize offered must be disclosed in the advertisement.
Repair and Service Rules – For any repair or service $25 or more, the seller must provide an estimate or notice of the consumer’s right to receive an estimate. If the total cost is found to be 10 percent or more of the estimate, the seller must get the consumer’s signed permission before beginning additional work.
CAN-SPAM Act – In business, your contact list is king. In today’s age of technology, email marketing is still one of the top ten methods to advertise to your target audience. However the CAN-SPAM Act bans deceptive subject lines and requires an individual or business to provide an easy way for the consumer to opt-out of email messages.

While these laws are the most significant that businesses need to be compliant with, there are more specific laws that apply to certain industries. To learn more about business and advertising laws, visit Complying with Ohio Consumer Law: A Guide for Businesses.

Four Mistakes Companies Make When Marketing to Minorities

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 11:30:00 -0500

As diversity and inclusion have become more prevalent in today’s society, more and more organizations and institutions are making an effort to establish social equality and equity as a priority in the workplace. Now more than ever, it has become increasingly important to position one’s brand as forward-thinking, progressive and socially conscious to satisfy consumer’s desire for sustainable, cultural change. But within the last decade, some may say these words have become nothing more than buzzwords to appeal to minority audiences. While many organizations have made noble efforts to become more diverse and inclusive, stereotypical archetypes have emerged that have created false ideas of what “minority” looks like, and the advertisements these organizations present project these fictitious images. In defense of these actions, most marketing companies rely on statistics to identify a target audience to create customer profiles, but those research results are typically rooted in prejudice and biases.

Here are four of the most common mistakes companies and organizations make, but should avoid, when marketing to minorities:

1. When marketing to a Black women or Black families, the woman is always of a lighter complexion with loose curly hair. While this hair texture is more commonly associated with multiracial or Hispanic women, loose curly hair is not most common among African-American women. Furthermore, in this politically acceptable version of a Black middle-class family, the father is typically dark skin, clean-shaven and dressed in a professional or businesslike fashion. This depiction of the typically Black woman and man embraces the concept of colorism that African-American communities has continually denounced due to its insinuation that only one shade of Black is politically and socially acceptable.

Image: ABC/Nicole Wilder

2. In photographs promoting the organization’s product or service, there is always the “token minority.” These are the single individuals representing their racial group as a marketing tactic to express diversity and show the company’s commitment to inclusiveness. When attempting to show a diverse group, the company in its commercial, movie or photograph will most often include two white males, two white women, a male or female of Asian, Indian or Hispanic descent, and the typical Black woman and Black man as described in mistake one. Minority audiences can easily identify the ploy being presented and begin to view the advertisement as disingenuous and deceitful.

Image: Monkey Business

3. When including Hispanic women in advertisements, companies tend to oversexualize them and depict them as “spicy” Latina women. In commercials and photographs, these women typically wear a short, tight dress, showing off a curvaceous body, and speak in a low tone with her Spanish accent while seducing the consumer into buying or using the product or service.

Image: Facebook/Pepsi

4. When advertising to people of Asian descent, marketers tend to include chopsticks, pandas or dragons in the logo or as symbols in commercials even when the “Asian theme” does not fit the company’s brand. Rooted in racial stereotypes, this practice is not only disrespectful to people who identify as Asian but can come across as nonsensical and bizarre as well. While the goal may be to relate to the target audience, the advertisement is viewed as distasteful and insincere.

Image: Dolce & Gabbana

While organizations may be prioritizing efforts to become more diverse and inclusive, it has become abundantly clear that many businesses still lack workplace diversity which leads to the production of racially insensitive advertisements. These advertisements harm and disrespect not only specific cultures and minority groups but society as a whole as well. Advertisements can and will become less stereotypical only once there is more diversity within the company itself. Businesses and organizations that take better care in establishing awareness and understanding of cultural norms and diverse experiences will be able to better market to and grasp the attention of minority audiences.

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Five Laws You Should Know Before Doing Business in Ohio

Four Mistakes Companies Make When Marketing to Minorities