Check your copy against the main rules on truthful advertising in Singapore.
Take the last ad or post you published and find one sentence in it about what you sell, what it does or what it costs. Ask yourself whether you could hand a customer the proof for that sentence today.
Most small business owners never read the advertising rules, and for most of them nothing happens. Problems, when they come, tend to grow out of one claim. A customer complains. Someone posts a screenshot of your post to a group chat. A buyer wants a refund because the ad promised them something.
Mei Ling (an invented example) makes birthday cakes. She was writing a post about them and typed "the best cakes in Singapore". She stopped there, because every baker seems to use that line. She also remembered a competitor baker (also invented) who had said their cakes had "100% natural ingredients". Those cakes were covered in coloured fondant, and the post filled up with critical comments. Mei Ling deleted her line and put in "baked the morning of delivery, in Punggol". She can back that claim up.
The notes below are general information and are not legal advice. If you are unsure about a claim in a regulated area, read the source document or talk to a lawyer.
The Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS) publishes the Singapore Code of Advertising Practice. Its starting principle is that every ad should be legal, decent, honest and truthful. The Code applies to most media, and websites and social media are included. It also has separate sections for particular issues, including testimonials, comparisons with competitors and price claims.
The Code is self-regulatory. The advertising industry runs it, and Parliament did not pass it as an Act. If someone complains to ASAS, it can look into the ad and ask the advertiser to change it or take it down if it breaches the Code. You can read the whole Code on the ASAS website. It is short, and an afternoon is enough to skim it.
The Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act is different because it is the law. Under the Act, some kinds of conduct count as an unfair practice. Two examples are doing or saying something that deceives or misleads a consumer, and making a false claim. Someone who loses out because of an unfair practice can take action against the business, and the Act can be enforced in other ways too.
You can skip learning the Act section by section. For the copy you write each week, one question covers most of it. Could a reasonable customer be misled about what they are buying, what it costs, what it does, or what result they will get? If they could, the claim has to change. It makes no difference that you didn't mean to mislead anyone. The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) and the Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) both have current guidance on the Act on their websites.
In some sectors there are extra rules on top of the general ones. MAS regulates financial products and sets rules and guidelines on how they can be advertised. The Health Sciences Authority (HSA) regulates health products and health claims, and there are limits on what you can say a health product treats or cures.
Education needs the same care. Parents read what an education provider says about results very closely, and some types of education provider are overseen by specific regulators. A line such as "guaranteed to improve by two grades" is risky for any business to use. For a tuition centre it is also a promise that cannot hold for every child.
If you work in money, health or education, read your regulator's guidance before you promise returns, health effects or exam results.
Testimonials persuade people more than most other kinds of proof, so the rules on them are worth knowing. A genuine testimonial is a real customer, in writing or on camera, talking about their own real experience of what you sell. Ask the customer for permission to use it. Keep a note of where each one came from so you can show the source if anyone asks.
Three practices count as misleading. The first is making up reviews. The second is writing reviews yourself. The third is editing a real review until it says something the customer didn't mean. You can trim a quote, but its meaning has to stay the one the customer gave it.
An honest testimonial can still mislead if the result in it is out of the ordinary. Readers assume that a result you feature is the usual one. Picture a tuition centre where most students improved a little and one student jumped three grades. If the centre puts that student's story on its homepage, parents will expect the same for their own child. There are two ways to avoid this. You can pick testimonials that reflect what most customers get, or you can say clearly that the result is not typical. The testimonial section of the Singapore Code of Advertising Practice gives the exact wording to follow.
Run every claim in your ads, posts and web pages through these questions:
Is the claim true today, and do you have evidence you could show someone? Would a reasonable reader take it the way you mean it? Have you left out anything, such as conditions, extra fees or limits, that would change the reader's decision? If you compare yourself with a competitor, is the comparison fair, and could the reader check it? If you promise a result, do most customers get it, or is it clearly marked as not typical? If you quote a testimonial, is it real, used with permission, and unchanged in meaning? If your business is in money, health or education, have you read your sector's rules? Does every price you show match what the customer will actually pay?
A claim that fails any one of the eight gets one of three fixes: you find evidence for it, you rewrite it, or you delete it. Most can be saved by turning the vague claim into a specific one and attaching proof, using the method from Lesson 3.2. Mei Ling did this when she took out "the best" and said instead when and where her cakes are baked.
For your activity, pick the page or post where your claims are boldest. For many businesses that is the homepage or the ad that has been shared most. Go through it line by line against the eight questions and be strict with yourself. If you believe a claim is true but can't produce the evidence today, mark it anyway.
Go through one page of your copy with the honesty checklist. Mark every claim you could not prove today.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).