Duracell sues Energizer, claiming ad campaign features ‘misleading' battery life claims
America's top battery brands are locked in a power struggle over battery life claims.
Duracell has filed a lawsuit against Energizer, accusing the rival battery maker of running a deceptive advertising campaign.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan on June 13, Duracell — which is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway — alleged that Energizer's new ad campaign falsely states that its Energizer MAX batteries outlast Duracell Power Boost batteries by 10%.
The ad's claims have caused Duracell to suffer 'irreparable reputational harm, including the tarnishing of its brand and loss of goodwill,' Duracell said in the complaint.
Duracell alleged that the sole basis for Energizer's 10% claim is a comparison of the two brands' AA batteries under one industry standard, but battery performance is also measured by other standards, the company said.
'The Energizer MAX False Advertising is a clear effort by Energizer to expand its market share – at Duracell's expense – by confusing and misleading consumers about the comparative performance of Energizer MAX batteries and Duracell Power Boost batteries with blantantly false advertising in a transparent, and unfair, effort to drive sales,' the complaint said.
Energizer's new ad campaign, which launched earlier this month, has been featured on numerous television channels, as well as on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, the lawsuit said.
One YouTube ad features Energizer's mascot, the Energizer Bunny, engaging in a head-to-head showdown with a battery that looks like a Duracell battery.
'There's no competition. Energizer MAX outlasts Duracell Power Boost by 10%,' the ad says. 'No fluff, just facts.'
Duracell is seeking to halt Energizer's ads and for Energizer to pay monetary damages.
Energizer did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Howard Marks says he used AI tool Perplexity to help write his latest memo
Howard Marks says he enlisted Perplexity, an AI tool, to help write his latest memo. It laid out how he thinks regulations have distorted California's fire insurance market, reducing coverage. Marks still included colorful commentary from himself and wisdom from Warren Buffett. Howard Marks' memos are considered must-reads by many in the financial world, including Warren Buffett. Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, helped write a chunk of his latest missive. Marks, the billionaire co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, has been writing memos for 35 years and turns 80 next year. That makes it perhaps a little surprising that he's drafted in a machine as a contributor. "In a sign of the times, I'll let my new (and AI-powered) editorial assistant, Perplexity, fill you in on the background," Marks said in a Wednesday memo titled "More on Repealing the Laws of Economics." The veteran fund manager said he hadn't "changed a word" of Perplexity's output, which was "pretty close to what I would have produced in an hour or two." In support of his argument for free-market economics and less government intervention, Marks roped in the AI tool to lay out his view that regulations have distorted the fire insurance sector in California, resulting in widespread underinsurance. "As Perplexity notes, insurers were told they couldn't price fire policies to reflect increases in the frequency and severity of forest fires," Marks said. "Likewise, they couldn't raise prices to pass through the higher premiums their reinsurers were charging based on the increased frequency and severity." The distressed-debt investor asked whether a hypothetical insurer would cover a $5 million house with a 1% chance of burning down if the regulator only allowed it to charge $25,000 a year for a policy. "I didn't need Perplexity to tell me the insurance company faces an expected payout of $50,000 on that policy," Marks said. "The answer's simple: you don't write that policy." AI tools are divisive. Proponents hail them as productivity boosters that will free workers from mundane tasks and supercharge economic growth. Critics fear they'll stymie learning and development, erode skills, and destroy so many jobs that they cause mass unemployment. Marks may have embraced AI but he still finds value in human wisdom. In his new memo, he quoted Buffett saying the US fiscal deficit was "unsustainable" and could become "uncontrollable" during Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in May. The Wall Street legend also included his own colourful, incisive comments: "The behavior in Washington with regard to both the fiscal deficit and the precariousness of Social Security remind me of the tale of the guy who jumped off the 20-story building. As he passed the 10th floor, he said, 'so far, so good.'" Marks may be in his golden years and as skeptical of high-flying assets as ever, yet seems open-minded about innovations. For example, he went from dismissing bitcoin as "not real" in 2017, to trumpeting its privacy and convenience in 2021 after learning about cryptocurrencies from his son. He's clearly finding uses for AI too. Read the original article on Business Insider Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
36-year-old travels the world in a Toyota Tacoma: After 3 years on the road, this is her No. 1 takeaway
In 2015, Ashley Kaye's father died and she inherited her childhood home in Waterford, Wisconsin. At the time, she was 27 years old, working in corporate healthcare and transitioning to a consulting job, where she worked 80 to 100 hours a week. "I worked from home, so I just walked from my bedroom to my office to the kitchen and repeat," Kaye, now 36, tells CNBC Make It. "I was a zombie in those times," While traveling, Kaye met someone on a scuba diving trip in Honduras who helped her realize what she wanted was to leave her career behind and travel full-time. "We just hit it off and chatted the whole time I was there. We spoke about the worst of the worst, the best of the best, and financials, too," Kaye says. "He told me he wished he had done it sooner because it's so much easier and cheaper than you think. That changed everything for me. I went home and worked more and more until I quit the next year." Kaye spent the next three years traveling during the covid-19 pandemic. While on a trip to South Africa, she received unexpected news that her aunt was ill and she'd need to fly back home to Wisconsin. "That flight was probably the moment where not a single ounce of my being was like 'Yay, I'm going home.' It was like, 'I don't want to be here. This isn't it for me.'," she says. "I love being on the islands. I love having the ocean near me. That took away the hesitation I had in previous years about selling the house." While Kaye was back home caring for her aunt, she prepared her childhood home for sale and considered her next move. She thought a lot about trying van life and living and traveling with her dog. "Traveling by plane with a dog just sounded like a terrible idea," she says. "I do a lot of photography, so I knew I wanted something where I could reach tougher destinations." While waiting for the sale of her home to close, a couple reached out to Kaye on Instagram to ask about her time in South Africa. They shared their experience overlanding in a Toyota truck with a camper in the truck bed. Overlanding is a form of self-reliant travel that involves adventuring to remote destinations, typically in a vehicle of some type. After doing a bit of her own research, Kaye was all-in and purchased a Toyota Tacoma truck for $42,934, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Kaye picked up the truck in South Dakota and drove it back to Wisconsin to finish packing up her home when it officially sold in March 2023. Now that her new home was the truck, Kaye set off on her first adventure: A drive down to Baja California, Mexico. She stayed there for three months and planned out the renovations she would need to make the truck more livable. "My life is kind of like 'the plan is there is no plan.' Most people plan this type of adventure for years. I didn't even have a truck when I accepted the offer on my house," she says. "It was very spur of the moment, so I needed to take a pause and figure things out." While living in Mexico, Kaye found an American company that made the truck bed replacements that would provide external storage and make it easier for her to live and travel in the Toyota Tacoma. But, the installation couldn't happen until September. In the meantime, Kaye learned as much as she could about the truck and the kind of camper she would need. She estimates that she has spent over $50,000 on the renovations. Costs included purchasing a camper, adding solar power, replacing the truck bed, upgrading the suspension, new tires, customizing a bumper, and installing an electric cooler. When the truck was ready, Kaye decided to journey the Pan-American Highway, starting in Denver. The highway stretches from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina. "It's really an incredible way to travel because you get to set your own pace and if you find somewhere that's beautiful and peaceful you can stay as long as you want," Kaye says. "But there's pros and cons to every mode of travel and a lot of red tape and logistics crossing borders. It can be exhausting, especially when you're alone. You have to find a balance that works for you, but overall, it's definitely one of the coolest adventures of my lifetime." Since living and traveling in the truck full-time, Kaye has visited Mexico, every country in Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and parts of Argentina. In total, she's been to over 20 countries so far. "I don't want to be a cliché and say it's a dream life because it's a lot of work and there are a lot of things that you need to take care of and maintain," she says. "But it's really incredible to be able to wake up and just look at the map and say, 'Should I go sleep inside this volcano or go to the jungle or go to the beach?' You have a lot of really beautiful options, so I can't really complain." After all this time on the road, Kaye says the biggest lesson she's learned is that life is too short. "Ever since I started traveling, [I learned] life is just too short. You don't have to go and quit your career to travel the world but whatever your dreams and goals are in life just start now and everything else is just figuring out a goal," she says. Kaye says when she was younger, it was her dad who taught her that she was capable of anything. "I grew up with my dad raising me and telling me every day 'You can be anything you want when you grow up and you can do anything,'" she says. "He was 57 when he passed away, so he never even got to retire. His passing taught me how to live life because you never know how much time you have in life."
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Warren Buffett's Top Recommendation for Investors Could Turn $500 Per Month Into $100,000 in 10 Years.
Buffett shares a lot of investment advice in his shareholder letters and annual meetings. He recommends one investment for most people, including the executor of his estate. If you consistently add to your portfolio, you could have six figures within a decade of starting. 10 stocks we like better than Vanguard S&P 500 ETF › Warren Buffett is happy to share investment advice with anyone who's interested. His annual letters to shareholders and extended question-and-answer sessions at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meetings are incomparable sources of wisdom. Buffett has been a great guide for countless successful investors who like to pick great companies, not just great stocks. But the Oracle of Omaha's top recommendation for most investors is to ignore a lot of that and keep things as simple as possible. That's because it's often the behavioral challenges of investing in individual companies that trip up those who would otherwise be successful. Buying or selling a great company at the wrong price at the wrong time is a path to underperformance. Here's what Buffett recommends instead. One of the easiest ways for investors to avoid the behavioral tripwires that can lead to lagging the stock market is to stop trying to outperform the market average in the first place. That's why Buffett's top recommendation for average investors is to put money in an index fund. He prefers the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO). Buffett plans to take his own advice, too. He instructed the executor of his estate to put 90% of his wealth in the index fund after his passing. If you consistently put aside $500 of your paycheck every month, you could be sitting on a six-figure portfolio 10 years from now, even if you're starting from nothing. Buffett doesn't think dollar-cost averaging is for active stock pickers. While he doesn't try to time the market, he does try to value companies. Buying a company's stock without regard for its value (as dictated by a dollar-cost averaging strategy) won't lead to the outperformance stock pickers seek. But when it comes to passive investing, the best way to get the most out of your money is to put all your money into the fund and consistently add to it over time with money from your earnings. Earning average returns for a long time can produce above-average wealth. The S&P 500 expanded to a 500-constituent format in March of 1957. Since then, the broad-based index has gone on to produce a compound average annual total return of 10.5%. That return is achieved by reinvesting dividends, which most brokerages allow you to do automatically. If you set up a brokerage account and automatically purchase $500 of the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF every month while reinvesting dividends, here's what you can expect if you earn average returns from the last 70 years. Years Investing Expected Value of Portfolio 1 $6,335 2 $13,335 3 $21,068 4 $29,611 5 $39,050 6 $49,477 7 $60,998 8 $73,726 9 $87,788 10 $103,324 Calculations by author. It's worth pointing out that $500 per month, or $6,000 per year, is less than the annual contribution limit for an IRA. That will ensure you keep your investments tax-deferred or even tax-free. While the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF doesn't have a history of capital gains distributions, investors still have to pay taxes on its income distributions from dividends. Those usually incur a 15% qualified dividend tax, so there's a slight tax drag. But even if you set aside 15% of each dividend distribution, you could end up with a portfolio value north of $100,000 based on average returns. If you contribute the $500 per month to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, you could end up with well over $100,000. That's because most plans include a matching contribution. While you might not have the Vanguard fund available in your plan, most include some low-cost index funds. Even with relatively high fees, that can be the easiest way to build a sizable portfolio for retirement. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's Vice Chairman and longtime friend, once told a young investor that the first $100,000 is the hardest. (He used more colorful language.) Once you have $100,000, you can let off the gas a bit because the returns from the portfolio will start to do some of the work for you. Indeed, if all you did was invest $500 per month for 10 years like above and let it sit for another 10 years, you'd have close to $280,000 without adding another penny. Wait 15 more years, and you'll have around $1.25 million. That's the true power of compounding, and it doesn't take any special skills or market timing knowledge to get there. Before you buy stock in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $891,722!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Adam Levy has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Warren Buffett's Top Recommendation for Investors Could Turn $500 Per Month Into $100,000 in 10 Years. was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
