ASA Adjudication on Howards Group Ltd

Ad

Several local press ads, for an estate agent, advertised properties and were headlined "November sale".

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the claim "November sale" was misleading, because she believed ads in previous weeks had advertised properties at the same or lower prices.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Howards Estate Agent (Howards) said they prided themselves on their open and transparent approach to their clients.  They said they had been in business since the 1920s and, to their knowledge, this was the first complaint they had received.

Howards said they had used a similar "sale" format on several occasions in the past, for example in August when they promoted a "summer sale".   They said the ad merely promoted the properties they had for sale during the month of November and they had used a "sale" theme to do that.  They believed that did not breach the Code.   They said they quoted the current asking prices of the properties and those prices could, and often did, differ from week to week.  

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted Howards had used the "November sale" theme to promote the properties they had available for sale during that month and that those properties had not necessarily reduced in price from the previous month.  

We considered, however, that the inclusion of the red "November sale" banner across the top of the ad, especially in conjunction with claims such as "substantial savings on these properties", was likely to be interpreted by readers to mean that the majority of the properties advertised had recently been reduced in price.  Because they had not, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness).

Action

We told Howards Group not to repeat the approach and advised them to contact the CAP Copy Advice team for guidance on their future advertising.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)