ASA Adjudication on MI6 Confidential

Ad

Claims on MI6 Confidential magazine's website, viewed on 16 March 2011, for a James Bond magazine, included "MI6 Confidential is the only professionally created James Bond magazine available exclusively in print".

Issue

007 Magazine & Archive Ltd challenged whether the claim was misleading and could be substantiated.

Response

MI6 Confidential said that information on 007 Magazines website showed that as of June 2006, it had become an exclusively online publication, with issues 49 and 50 of the magazine being available online only; it was not until June 2009 that the magazine became available in print form again. They said that 007 Magazine supplemented print issues with additional content which was only available via its paid online subscription service, which meant that consumers must purchase both the print magazine and maintain a paid online subscription account to access all the available content. They said that, for those reasons, they believed that their claim stood correct that MI6 Confidential was the only print only unofficial James Bond publication.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA understood from 007 Magazine & Archive that their magazine was professionally produced and, whilst additional content was available to online subscribers, the articles and other content in the 007 Magazine were only available in the printed edition, which was a stand-alone product and could not be accessed online. We noted that issues 49 and 50 of 007 Magazine, published in August and November 2006, had been available online only, but that, from issue 51 onwards, the magazine content had once again been available in print only. We noted the magazine content was available exclusively online for only a brief period compared to the overall longevity of the magazine, which had first been published in 1979, and the content of which was currently published in print only. For that reason, and because the magazine content had for several years again been available only in print, we considered the complainants magazine content was also available exclusively in print.

We therefore considered that the claim "MI6 Confidential is the only professionally created James Bond magazine available exclusively in print" was not accurate. We concluded that the claim was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.38 (Other comparisons).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)