ASA Adjudication on npower Ltd

Ad

A TV ad, for Npower, showed a concert at Wembley stadium. The voice-over stated "Changing energy? Switch to NPower. Supplier of energy to concerts at Wembley stadium".

Issue

Two viewers challenged whether the ad was misleading, because they believed recent concerts at the stadium had been powered by on-site generators.

BCAP TV Code

Response

npower said it was common practice for concert promoters to bring their own power generators to support an event.  They said it was very rare that a venue, including Wembley Stadium, could generate sufficient power to deal with the additional lighting and speakers associated with such a major concert event, especially when that event was also being broadcast to the wider world.

npower said the stadium itself generated a certain amount of power (which was all supplied by npower) but it was normally supplemented by additional generators (provided by the event holder) for large concert events. They believed the statement in their TV ad was not misleading, because they did supply energy to Wembley stadium and a concert would not be able to take place without the power provided by them.  They said the fact that some concerts had a secondary energy source, specifically provided to meet the demands of those events, did not invalidate the claim.

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) said npower had confirmed to them that they were the official energy supplier to Wembley stadium.  They said the ad did not suggest that npower were the only source of energy to Wembley stadium, it merely stated that they were one of its energy suppliers.  The BACC said they therefore stood by their approval of the claim.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA noted npower supplied the energy to Wembley stadium itself.  We also noted some events used supplementary power sources, from generators provided by the event holders, to meet the additional demands created by those events.  

We noted the ad merely stated "supplier of energy to concerts at Wembley stadium" and did not claim that npower were the only source of energy to the stadium.  We considered that viewers were unlikely to understand that npower were the only source of energy to the stadium during concerts but would merely understand that npower was the stadium's main energy supplier.  We concluded that the ad was unlikely to mislead.

We investigated the ad under CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising) and 5.2.1 (Evidence) but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)