Texaco Agrees to Tone Down Ad Claims : Energy: Arbitrators say gasoline additive wasn’t tested against results from Chevron product.
Under attack by rival Chevron Corp., Texaco agreed Tuesday to change millions of dollars’ worth of advertising for its much-vaunted new gasoline.
Following recommendations by an advertising industry arbitration group, Texaco said it will remove wording that suggests that a new gasoline additive is uniquely capable of removing deposits in the engine combustion chamber. Such deposits can cause rough idling, poor acceleration and power loss.
The ad group found that Texaco failed to test its compound against an existing Chevron additive, also used by other unnamed major brands, that could provide roughly the same benefit to many drivers.
The Texaco product, called CleanSystem3, was introduced in March as the first gasoline to clean up existing combustion chamber deposits--a prime objective of auto fuel researchers in recent years. Texaco has gained at least 5% in gasoline market share since introducing the new additive.
“And they have shown that it does what they claim . . . but because they did not test against this 22% of the market (that uses Chevron’s additive), they can’t make a claim against the whole market,” said Robin Rae Kravitz, who directed the investigation for the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, an alternative dispute-resolution organization.
Though legally non-binding, NAD decisions are generally accepted by companies seeking to avoid cumbersome legal challenges from competitors under federal false-advertising law.
The ad group ruled “acceptable hyperbole” ads describing Texaco’s fuel as a “new generation of gasoline.” But it called for dropping such “open-ended superlatives” as those claiming that the gasoline offers the “highest” performance or “best” mileage--which it wants changed to “higher” or “improved.”
“Texaco is gratified that NAD has confirmed the truthfulness of the core of Texaco’s advertising claims,” the company said in a statement. Though it disagreed with the decision, the company said it “will not take issue with the modifications proposed by NAD.”
Chevron has used a different additive for 14 years that it claims also cleans up combustion chamber deposits. Chevron said it had not made the claim in any of its trade literature or retail advertising because the additive concentration in gasoline sold at the pump is so low that it takes a long time for the fuel to improve the car’s performance.
However, Chevron does advertise that its bottled concentrate sold separately at service stations cleans combustion chamber deposits.
“We have a policy not to make cleanup claims (for gasoline) unless a consumer can see it in one or two tankfuls,” said Carl C. Thut , manager of product engineering, for Chevron U.S.A. Products Co.
