Natural-ish: A New Decision Underscores NAD’s Expansive Understanding of Natural Claims

“Natural” claims are infamously risky business. Between the specter of class action lawsuits, FTC actions, and competitor challenges, claims that a product is “natural” require special vigilance. A recent NAD case addresses a threshold question that comes up, time and again, in practice: what exactly constitutes a natural claim? 

In the recent Pamprin Botanicals case filed by Bayer Consumer Heaelth (Bayer) against Focus Consumer Healthcare (Focus), NAD considered the challenger’s argument that the claim “naturally good for you ingredients” conveyed a message about the naturalness of Pamprin Botanical’s ingredients. NAD found that it does. It noted that the “naturally good for you ingredients” claim appears alongside a list of the product’s ingredients as well as the visual of a leaf. While NAD found that the claim did not suggest that the “product as a whole” was a natural one, NAD did determine that the “naturally good for you ingredients” claim conveyed that the listed ingredients are, indeed, natural. NAD noted “[t]here is no evidence in the record as to whether the five ingredients listed are indeed natural,” and recommended that the advertiser remove the claim and avoid conveying this message.  

NAD’s finding on this issue is reminiscent of the 2016 Naturally Dry case, where NAD found that the “Naturally Dry” product name conveyed the message that natural ingredients were responsible for the dryness provided by the antiperspirant—a message NAD deemed unsupported.

Challenger Bayer also took issue with Focus’s product name--Pamprin Botanicals--on the grounds that this name, too, implied that the product was natural. On this point, NAD sided with the advertiser. Despite the word “Botanical” in the product name, NAD trotted out its familiar standard on name change recommendations: “As a general rule, absent extrinsic evidence that consumers have been confused or misled, NAD will not require an advertiser to change the name of a product simply because a challenger suspects that it may be misleading.”

Here, NAD determined that the name “Pamprin Botanicals” was not expressly false. “Botanical” is defined as “of or relating to plants or botany” or “derived from plants”—a message that was supported in this case. But NAD found that “[n]othing in the plain language of the name conveys the message that all ingredients in Pamprin Botanicals are plant based or that it is an all-natural product.” In reaching its conclusion, NAD distinguished this case from Zarbees Naturals, where NAD found that the product name did, in fact, convey a “natural” message.