DirecTV ends Lowe ads after Comcast objection

DirecTV has stopped its advertising campaign contrasting a suave Rob Lowe satellite-TV subscriber with more questionable Rob Lowe cable users after Comcast Corp. complained about the ads' claims of better service.

"The Rob Lowe campaign was always scheduled to end at the end" of the first quarter of 2015, Jon Gieselman, DirecTV's senior vice president of marketing, said. "We wanted to launch our new campaign with Hannah Davis in the Final Four," he said, referring to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and the NCAA college basketball tournament.

In the ads, Lowe played both himself as a DirecTV user and a variety of sad-sack cable users with scrawny arms and crazy hair, some of them paranoid and others who showed poor judgment. Philadelphia-based Comcast complained about the ads' assertions that DirecTV provided superior signal reliability and better customer service.

The Council of Better Business Bureaus' National Advertising Division, which reviews complaints and checks accuracy, recommended that DirecTV drop the claims.

"We're pleased with NAD's decision that confirms DirecTV's advertising campaign contains false claims," a Comcast representative told the Washington Post.

DirecTV spokeswoman Cara Brugnoli said the timing of the end of the campaign was not influenced by any outside factor.

"We always reserve the right to bring back the Rob Lowe campaign, either in its current form or with new spots," Gieselman said. "It has been extremely successful for the brand."