ASA Adjudication on The Guild of Fine Food

Ad

A leaflet for Fine Food Digest magazine claimed "98.8% of delicatessens and farm shops read Fine Food Digest - that's a fact ... Over 98% of all delis and farm shops receive Fine Food Digest and 88.1% read every issue, either cover to cover or relevant articles. This compares with just 75% of delis and farm shops receiving Speciality Food Magazine, with 68.5% reading every issue, either cover to cover or relevant articles. 25% of all delicatessens do not receive Speciality Food Magazine ...". A footnote stated "Source: UK Speciality & Fine Food Retailing 2005 by Apicus Marketing".

Issue

Aceville Publications Ltd, the publisher of Speciality Food Magazine, challenged the claims:

1. "98.8% of delicatessens and farm shops read Fine Food Digest" and

2. "... this compares with just 75% of delis and farm shops receiving Speciality Food Magazine, with 68.5% reading every issue, either cover to cover or relevant articles. 25% of all delicatessens do not receive Speciality Food Magazine".

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Fine Food Digest (FFD) said the leaflet was produced in 2005 and was based on an industry survey they had commissioned in November 2004. They acknowledged that the survey was now out of date and said they did not intend to use the data again.

FFD said the survey was sent to a representative sample of 1,341 delicatessens and farm shops across the UK, selected from their mailing list. They said their mailing list contained most of the delicatessens and farm shops in the UK, but did not include specialist food retailers or cafs. They said they used their own strict definition of what constituted a delicatessen and farm shop, which they understood differed from a wider interpretation used by Speciality Food Magazine. FFD argued that the claims in the leaflet were accurate, based on their definition of a delicatessen and farm shop.

The FFD said they received 202 completed questionnaires, a response rate of 15%. They said the survey asked retailers for their assessment of a range of trade magazines. They said the survey showed that, of the delicatessens sampled, 99% received Fine Food Digest, and almost half read every issue from cover to cover, whilst only 75% of respondents received Speciality Food and fewer than 40% read it cover to cover.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted that magazine distribution and readership were subject to change and that the data in the leaflet had been collected in November 2004; we considered that this data was not recent enough to use as substantiation for the claims. We welcomed FFD's assurance that they would not use the data again.

We also noted that the questionnaire was only sent to delicatessens and farm shops that were on the FFD mailing list, based on the FFD's own definition of delicatessens and farm shops. We acknowledged that FFD believed their definition of delicatessens and farm shops was more accurate than the one used by Speciality Food Magazine, but we also noted Speciality Food Magazine had provided circulation data based on their definition of delicatessens and farm shops that showed Speciality Food Magazine had a larger circulation than Fine Food Digest.

We considered that, because the leaflet did not make clear that the survey was based on FFD's own definition of delicatessens and farm shops, the claims "98% of delicatessens and farm shops read Fine Food Digest" and "... this compares with just 75% of delis and farm shops receiving Speciality Food Magazine ... 24% of all delicatessens do not receive Speciality Food Magazine" were likely to mislead. We told FFD to use up-to-date survey information and explain the basis for comparison in future.

The leaflet breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 18.1 (Comparisons with identified competitors and/or their products).

Action

We told FFD to remove or amend the claims in future advertising.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)