ASA Adjudication on Jamba! GmbH

Ad

A TV ad, for mobile phone games, showed several screenshots from mobile phone games. The voice-over said "Get the coolest action games when you subscribe to Eurosport Clubs for £6 a week. To get Medal of Honor: Airborne, send EURO 1. To get Juiced 2 send EURO 2, for classic Bejeweled send EURO 3 … or check out our gaming store by sending EURO to XX XXX now." Six mobile phone games were featured, with moving images demonstrating the games shown to the left of the screen, while the game boxes were featured on the right. The Eurosport logo, download phone numbers and the terms were also shown at the bottom of the screen.

Issue

The viewer objected that the ad was misleading, because the screenshots of the games were shown in a high definition format, which he said greatly exaggerated the quality of the images consumers would see when playing games downloaded to their mobile phone.

BCAP TV Code

Response

Jamba! GmbH t/a Jamster (Jamba) said they recognised that some game clips in the ad differed in resolution to the images which would be viewed on a mobile handset.  They said they expected customers to know that mobile game images were not always of the same quality as arcade or computer game images.  They gave the example that game packaging used better quality images than the games themselves, and argued that game ads often used higher quality images and resolution.  They said they had not intended to mislead customers and initially suggested adding a disclaimer to the ad regarding the higher resolution and improved image quality.  They subsequently said they would use representative images in future ads.

Clearcast said the ad was cleared in error.  They said they had believed the ad contained only a minor revision to a previously approved ad and the accuracy of the visuals had therefore not been questioned.  They said it was now apparent that the ad could mislead and that it should be amended to include actual game footage.   They did not consider that adding a disclaimer or caption was sufficient.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted that Jamba believed customers would not expect mobile game images to be of the same quality as arcade or computer game images, and we noted their suggestion of adding a disclaimer regarding the higher resolution and improved image quality.  However, we also noted that Clearcast did not believe a disclaimer was sufficient to clear the ad and they would have required actual game footage to be shown.  Because the ad offered a direct response mechanism whereby games seen on the ad could be downloaded directly to a mobile phone by text message, we considered the images in the ad should be representative of the images a mobile phone game user would see when playing the downloaded game.  

As the images shown in the ad were not actual game footage and because the game images viewed on mobile handset would be of a lower quality, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising) and 5.4.1 (Visual techniques and special effects).

Action

The ad must not be broadcast again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)