A promotion offering £10 of shopping vouchers was, the ASA concluded, 'misleading':
The ASA noted that the seven vouchers supplied by AN were offered in denominations of £1 and £2 and were redeemable against specific ranges of items such as cereals, meat, health and beauty products and household goods. We considered that the image of two £5 vouchers in the ad implied that viewers would receive vouchers in that larger denomination, which was not the case.
Furthermore, we noted the ad featured a scenario of a family doing their weekly shop which we considered reinforced the implication in the ad that the vouchers could be redeemed against a consumers total shopping bill. We considered that the ad should have made clear that the vouchers, totalling £10 overall, were in fact for smaller discounts off items in specific departments. Because the ad implied consumers would receive two five pound vouchers to spend as they wished which was not the case, we concluded the ad was likely to mislead.
The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and 5.1.3 (Misleading advertising) and 5.2.2 (Implications)
Posts
I suppose the punishment was to not publish the ad again in its current form?
ReplyDeleteCarl - Yes, that was the 'punishment'.
ReplyDeleteEven the terminology is misleading to me. I have always thought of a voucher as something spendable as if it were money in a given shop.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds more like what I would call a money-off coupon.
Also, I wonder how the amount of money this promotion made for the Mail comapares to a typical amount for someone caught committing benefit fraud.
ReplyDelete