ASA Adjudication on Danone UK Ltd

Ad

A TV ad for Danone stated "Actimel is scientifically proven and you can see that proof for yourself on our website. No wonder Danone Actimel is Britain's favourite probiotic. The ad showed piles of documents labelled "Scientific Study"; accompanying on-screen text stated "Best selling probiotic drinking yoghurt ACNielsen 2006".

Issue

Two complainants, who referred to the Actimel website as directed by the ad, challenged the claim "... you can see that proof for yourself on our website", because they found that only an overview of the evidence was available; text stated "The disclosure of these studies is restricted to Health Care Professionals not the general public".

BCAP TV Code

Response

Danone explained that the Actimel website was developed specifically for consumers and aimed to provide relevant, meaningful and understandable information to aid in the understanding of Actimel and its benefits.  They said the "proof" referred to in the ad was the scientific evidence that demonstrated that Actimel supported the body's natural defences.  They said the scientific evidence, which included summaries and details of the scientific studies and their authors, was presented in levels of detail within the site under the headings "What is Actimel?",  "How does it do it?", "How it works" and "What is the evidence?".  

They said, in addition, information under the heading "Other scientific studies" provided a full reference citation list for all of the studies used as "proof", grouped by topic area, to show that Actimel was scientifically proven to support the body's natural defences.  They believed the "proof" presented on the Actimel website was sufficient to satisfy the expectations of the average consumer but anyone who would like more information than was provided by the website was given sufficient information in the cited references to be able to obtain a copy of those studies.  They added that information under the heading "In the news" also gave independently written newspaper reports of the latest clinical trial published in the British Medical Journal in 2007.  They further explained that if anyone needed assistance in accessing any particular publication, they could contact the Actimel customer care line for advice; the telephone number and e-mail address were clearly displayed on each page.

Danone said the piles of papers entitled "Scientific Study" were used as a simple graphic to indicate to viewers the volume and nature of scientific proof behind Actimel.  Similarly, they said they had intended to convey in the voice-over, that only a list of studies would appear.  It was not their intention to imply the full studies were available to read on the Actimel website.      

Danone understood that the complainants had been disappointed to read the text "The disclosure of these studies is restricted to Health Care Professionals not the general public".  They said, because this referred to an area of the website under development, which was specifically intended for Health Care Professionals, they had removed the statement from its existing location.  They asserted, however, that all of the studies were available publicly through several sources such as the British Library or the US National Library of Medicine.

Danone believed they had acted in good faith.  They said they had received no complaints about the ad directly and asserted that it had never been their intention to mislead consumers.  

Clearcast explained that they had received confirmation from the agency prior to the ads approval that all of the evidence mentioned in the ad could be found on the Actimel website.    

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA understood that two viewers were concerned about the claim "Actimel is scientifically proven and you can see that proof for yourself on our website", because the complete scientific studies were not available online and text stated that the disclosure of the studies was restricted to health professionals only.  We acknowledged that Danone had removed the text "The disclosure of these studies is restricted to Health Care Professionals not the general public" from the Actimel website in light of the complaints and we welcomed their assurance that the studies cited online were generally available.  We also noted from evidence submitted in a previous investigation that Actimel had a proven probiotic effect.

We noted the Actimel website cited several references to scientific studies; interested readers could then research further any selected areas of interest.  We considered, however, that viewers would infer from the claim, in conjunction with images of piles of papers entitled "Scientific Study", that evidence in the form of scientific studies, rather than summaries and references, was available on the website for the general public to assess for themselves without having to undertake further research.  Because that was not the case we concluded that the claim "Actimel is scientifically proven and you can see that proof for yourself on our website" was misleading.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising) and 5.2.3 (Qualifications).

Action

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

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)