ASA Adjudication on Louis Dreyfus Armateurs S.A.S

Ad

A radio ad featured a woman singing "LD Lines, every mile makes me smile and smile". A male voice then stated "Cross the Channel in under an hour. Book at LDlines.co.uk".

Issue

Eurotunnel objected that the ad misleadingly implied that the journey time from port to port was consistently under an hour. They noted the LD Lines timetable stated it was exactly an hour for the Dover to Boulogne crossing, and they believed that it could take longer.

BCAP Radio Code

Response

LD Lines sent copies of the log for their Norman Arrow vessel from a recent week of operation. The logs showed that a significant proportion of the daily sailings had, they maintained, 'pier-to-pier' departure and arrival times that were under an hour.

Global Radio said they understood that the claim was based on pier-to-pier travel times. They maintained that it was an industry standard to use the channel crossing times and not include the boarding or disembarkation times. They believed that the information sent by LD Lines supported the claim.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted the ad stated that listeners could "Cross the Channel in under an hour" with LD Lines. We considered that listeners would understand that crossing times for ferries varied due to factors such as the weather, but would expect that the claim represented the typical time taken for a crossing. We also considered that consumers would appreciate that modes of transport, such as ferries, involved extra waiting time inherent to the process of boarding and disembarking, which resulted in the total journey time taken being greater than the actual crossing; they would therefore expect any stated crossing time to refer to the 'pier-to-pier' travel time.

We noted, however, the parts of the logs cited by LD Lines referred to the times of the vessel being 'full away on passage' (FAOP) and 'end of passage' (EOP). We understood that those terms related to the time the vessel departed and arrived at the port and not strictly the time it left or arrived at the pier. We noted the logs showed the vessels took longer than an hour to travel from pier-to-pier. Because the evidence did not show that customers could cross the channel pier-to-pier in under an hour, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) Radio Advertising Standards Code section 2 rule 3.1 (Misleadingness - General).

Action

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

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)