ASA Adjudication on NCJ Media Ltd

Ad

A regional press competition, run by the Evening Chronicle, stated "Chronicle Extra Promotion OUR HUGE CASH GIVEAWAY IS ABOUT TO START Your first token in our fantastic Tokens for Schools competition has finally arrived. Almost 150 schools in our region have signed up to take part in our latest competition. Tokens for Schools will see us giving away £15,000 for pupils and teachers to spend on whatever equipment they would like, from new books to toys, calculators to PE apparatus ... now it's up to all of you mums, dads, family members and friends of the community to collect as many tokens as possible and help your school scoop the prize. Your first token is below and you will find following tokens in your Evening Chronicle, Chronicle Extra and on Chroniclelive over the next 10 weeks ... The overall prize is divided into three categories - Primary, Secondary and Special Schools - and the winner from each category will bag themselves £5,000 to spend as they please. The deadline for collecting tokens is Friday July 13, 2007 and winners will be announced before the start of the summer holidays ... A maximum of 10 bonus tokens per child will be accepted ... £5,000 will be awarded to the primary, secondary and special school that collects that [sic] most tokens based on a pro rata system. Schools that have registered to take part are being reassured that information packs are being sent out now, so they will have everything they need to start collecting tokens on their return from the Easter holidays".

Issue

The complainant, who had co-ordinated her school's collection of tokens, thought the promotion had not been run fairly or efficiently.  She said the deadline for collecting tokens was brought forward at very short notice and, despite having asked the Evening Chronicle which schools won and how many tokens they had collected, no information about the winners was forthcoming.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

NCJ Media said pupils and families at participating schools needed to collect tokens that were printed in the Evening Chronicle.  The winners were the schools in each category that collected the greatest number of tokens per pupil.  Three schools in the region - one primary, one secondary and one special school - received a prize of £5,000 each.  NCJ Media sent a spreadsheet that showed all the schools that had taken part in the competition, the number of their pupils, the number of tokens each school had collected and the number of tokens per pupil collected by each school.

The publicised deadline for collecting tokens was 13 July 2007, which would have given registered schools two weeks to provide their final token count.  However, NCJ Media decided to bring the deadline forward to 4 July, to allow cheques to be presented to the winning schools before the summer holidays.  They acknowledged that that information might have been communicated more effectively by printing it in the Evening Chronicle, but felt a personal letter to each schools tokens co-ordinator announcing the new deadline of 4 July was sufficient, because it at least alerted each school to the new deadline or encouraged the school to contact them if there was a problem.  That letter was dated 27 June 2007 but the complainant did not receive it until 2 July. They said the complainant had, on receipt of the letter, phoned them to express concern about not having enough time to provide her schools final token count; they offered the complainant some extra time but she declined the offer on the grounds that it would not help.  They said they received no other complaints from schools and the token totals were provided on time.

The letter of 27 June stated " ... We will then come out to see the top 5 schools and count your tokens on Thursday, July 5th 2007, and be able to announce the winner on Friday!"  The complainant received a letter dated 5 July 2007 that stated her school had not won but did not announce the winners or the number of tokens the winners had collected; it stated that the winning schools would be featured in the paper "over the next week".  NCJ Media said that letter had been prepared on 5 July but was not completed and posted until 9 July; the date was not amended to carry the correct postal date.  NCJ Media said the winners were not announced on Friday 6 July but were printed in the Evening Chronicle at the earliest opportunity; they sent a copy of an extract of the 14 July 2007 edition of the paper that announced the winning schools in each category.  They did not write individually to the schools that had not won announcing the winners.

The complainant sent a letter of complaint to NCJ Media about the running of the competition in July 2007, which she followed up with phone calls and a fax, but said she did not receive a response.  NCJ Media said they initially mislaid the complainants letter but did eventually reply to it on 17 December 2007; they sent a copy of their reply.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA considered it was fair and reasonable for the winners to have been chosen on the basis that they collected the greatest number of tokens per pupil, instead of the greatest number of tokens overall, because that meant smaller schools were not at a disadvantage.  We noted from the spreadsheet submitted by NCJ Media that the winning schools were indeed the ones that had collected the greatest number of tokens per pupil.  We were satisfied that the winners had been selected fairly.

However, we considered there were several problems with the administration of the promotion.  Firstly, NCJ Media had decided at short notice to change the closing date to ensure they could announce the winners before the school holidays.  Because NCJ Media were presumably aware of, or could have found out, the dates of the school holidays before the promotion began, it seemed the change in closing date could have been avoided.

Secondly, we considered NCJ Media should have made more of an effort to communicate the change in deadline, for example by printing it in the Evening Chronicle and e-mailing or phoning schools' token co-ordinators.  We considered it would take some time for schools to inform pupils and their families of the new deadline and co-ordinate the counting of tokens and posting a letter a week before the new deadline date was therefore insufficient; we noted the complainant received the letter two days before the new deadline.  We acknowledged that NCJ Media had offered the complainant more time to submit her school's token count but there was unfortunately a discrepancy between the extra time the complainant claimed to have been allowed and the extra time NCJ Media said they granted her.  Also, we noted the letter of 27 June did not draw attention to the fact that the deadline had changed and been brought forward by nine days; it merely stated " ... Deadline for letting us know your tally is Wednesday, July 4th 2007, any schools which have not contacted us by 5.30pm on Wednesday will be assumed that they are not entering ...".  We considered that participants should have been given more notice of the change in deadline date but, if that was not possible, NCJ Media should at least have given greater prominence to the change in date by communicating it more effectively.  

We noted NCJ Media had published the names and towns of the winning schools.  However, there was a delay in announcing the winners; they were announced on 14 July instead of the publicised date of 6 July.  Although the delay was quite short, NCJ Media had provided no reason for it and participants who bought the Evening Chronicle on 6 July expecting to find the winners inside were likely to have been disappointed.  Also, the token totals of the winning schools were not published in the Evening Chronicle and NCJ Media's letter to the complainant of 17 December (which she said she never received) stated " ... we consider the individual efforts of each group and number of tokens collected individually as sensitive information ...".  They told the ASA that it had been a mistake to suggest the information was sensitive and that it was actually in the public domain; however they did not send proof of that.  We considered that participants should have been able to easily find out the token totals of the winning schools, through them being published or made available on request, but NCJ Media had not shown that was the case.  We noted the promotion stated "winners will be announced before the start of the summer holidays" but considered that NCJ Media had not specified clearly enough how and when winners and results would be announced.

We noted it took NCJ Media five months to reply to the complainant's letter of complaint about the competition; we considered that suggested they did not have adequate resources to deal with complaints about the promotion.  We also noted the complainant's assertion that she never received NCJ Media's letter of reply.

We concluded that several aspects of the promotion had not been conducted fairly or efficiently and it was therefore likely that it had misled and disappointed participants.

The promotion breached CAP Code clauses 7.1 (Truthfulness), 27.3 and 27.4 (Sales promotion rules - Introduction), 31.1 (Sales promotion rules - Administration),  34.1c (Sales promotion rules - Significant conditions for promotions) and 35.9e (Sales promotion rules - Other rules for prize promotions).

Action

We told NCJ Media to ensure that future promotions were conducted fairly, promptly and efficiently, under proper supervision and with adequate resources, and that they avoided causing unnecessary disappointment.  We also told them to specify clearly the closing date and how and when winners and results would be announced, and to publish or make available on request results or, if applicable, winning entries.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)