Case
Colgate v. Procter & Gamble Company
With the help of an Analysis Group team, Procter & Gamble (P&G) prevailed in litigation involving false advertising claims. Plaintiff Colgate-Palmolive alleged that P&G's comparative advertisements for its teeth-whitening products, Crest Whitestrips® and Crest Night Effects™, contained misleading and disparaging statements about Colgate's Simply White® and Simply White® Night. Colgate sought damages of between $79 million and $81 million from reduced product sales and profits. Colgate said its damages were calculated under two scenarios: in the first, P&G reduced its advertising budget by the amount it spent on comparative ads; in the second, P&G spent its entire television advertising budget on noncomparative ads. Under the direction of Senior Advisor Keith R. Ugone, an Analysis Group team evaluated Colgate's econometric model and claimed-damages calculations by analyzing A.C. Nielsen scanner data and CMR media-related data. Team members, including Managing Principals Marc Van Audenrode, Maureen Chakraborty, and Lauren Kindler and Principals Jimmy Royer and Na Dawson, demonstrated that Colgate's model contained serious flaws, rendering its damages estimates unreliable. The team was retained by P&G's counsel, the law firms of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. Following a three-week trial, the jury rejected Colgate's claim that P&G's comparative advertising contained misleading whitening efficacy content, and awarded no damages to Colgate.
Meet Our People
Marc Van Audenrode*
Managing Principal*Dr. Van Audenrode is an expert in data analysis and econometrics, labor economics, antitrust and competition policy, and public economics. He has consulted to clients - including law firms and government agencies - in Canada, the US, and Europe. Dr. Van Audenrode’s work includes developing a methodology to value desktop software; he also developed expertise valuing goods as varied as restaurant franchises, executive stock options, or smartphone features. His recent work in public economics includes evaluating the economic rent from hydroelectricity to the Canadian economy and the value of logging rights on the ancestral territory of a Canadian First Nation. In the area of labor economics, his work has included filing an expert report assessing fair compensation for Quebec provincial judges and Quebec prosecutors and advising Quebec’s commission on pay equity. Dr. Van Audenrode has filed expert reports in courts in the US, Canada, Belgium, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, and has testified in Canada and the US. He recently filed a report with the Amsterdam Court of Appeal in support of the settlement reached between Ageas and claimant organizations in the Fortis case, the largest settlement ever reached through the Dutch Collective Settlement Act (WCAM). Dr. Van Audenrode’s scientific research and articles have been published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals and trade journals. He is a coauthor of the book The Mutual Fund Industry: Competition and Investor Welfare, and is a frequent presenter at industry and academic conferences.
*Marc Van Audenrode srl