The CFPB has made no secret of its plan to write new rules restricting the payday lending industry. A number of the agency’s key staff came from activist groups like the Center for Responsible Lending, that have long pushed to end payday lending and other short-term loan services. But one radical activist group has taken their alignment with the CFPB’s goals one step too far.
National People’s Action, a group no stranger to using destruction of property, trespassing, and intimidating minors to advance its agenda, is out with a new advertising campaign criticizing payday lenders. To give its ad more weight, it included the CFPB’s logo–implying that the agency endorsed National People’s Action’s views.
The CFPB, however, says it has nothing to do with the aggressive ad and neither endorsed nor approved the video.
Advertising ethicists interviewed by the Washington Examiner sharply criticized the activist group’s actions. Wally F. Snyder, executive director of the Institute for Advertising Ethics of the American Advertising Federation, said:
It’s important consumers understand whose advertisement this is and then when you get to the point about endorsements, it’s really is important that this group absolutely endorsed it because it could convey authenticity or additional quality to the ad.
Essentially, at the same time the activist group is pushing the CFPB to institute “greater transparency” on lenders, it grossly misrepresents the support behind it’s own agenda.