Germany’s eighth largest advertising company, Springer and Jacoby, has produced a free TV advertisement for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), despite the fact that the campaign group boasts an annual income that matches its own.

According to W&V, Springer and Jacoby brings in around 69 million Euros per year compared to IFAW’s official total of $60 million. Far from having little money to spend on advertising, IFAW’s yearly budget for promoting itself runs at around $50 million, in various guises, making it potentially as attractive as Springer and Jacoby’s other clients, such as DaimlerChrysler.

But if Springer and Jacoby believes it can operate successfully without charging clients, it should at least take care to get the facts straight before engaging in unethical and misleading campaigns.

According to IFAW, the emotive TV commercial suggests to the viewer that whales will become extinct because of hunting by Japan and Norway. In fact, as everyone at the IWC knows, minke whales are abundant and the takes by Japan and Norway are so low that they have no impact on long-term population sizes.

Moreover, far from starting to whale "again" as the advert misleadingly proclaims, generations of Japanese and Norwegians have been hunting whales in a sustainable manner.

In 1999, IFAW got into trouble with another advertisement, which was banned by the British Advertising Standards Authority on the grounds that the information it contained lacked credibility and was out of date. Later that year, a Canadian judge criticized an IFAW video on seal hunting and described their cameraman as a "sophisticated con man". Now IFAW is up to its old tricks again.

We can only wonder why Springer and Jacoby would wish to donate their resources to a wealthy animal rights group with a reputation for disseminating endless misinformation. Can’t they think of a more worthy cause?