ASA Adjudication on Goodyear Dunlop Tyres UK Ltd

Ad

A trade magazine ad, for motorcycle tyres, was headlined "SMART THINKING FROM DUNLOP". Text stated "... The new D207e is the only economically-priced tyre from the major manufacturers to feature the very latest in compound developments ...".

Issue

Maxxis International UK plc (Maxxis) challenged whether the claim "The new D207e is the only economically-priced tyre from the major manufacturers ..." could be substantiated, because they believed they were a major manufacturer whose tyres were more economically priced than Dunlops tyres.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Goodyear Dunlop Tyres UK (GDT) said Dunlop Motorcycle tyres were produced as a joint venture between Goodyear and Sumitomo. They sent evidence from an independent website that showed the top 10 companies in terms of worldwide tyre sales in 2006; the evidence showed that Goodyear were third and Sumitomo were sixth. GDT argued that that substantiated that they were a major tyre manufacturer.

GDT asserted that most tyre manufacturers subscribed and contributed to the Europool market data service; they said data were provided for all market sectors and subscribers were allowed to see their own market share but not that of their competitors. They said the major manufacturers contributed to the report and used it as a benchmark for the industry; however, they understood that Maxxis did not subscribe to any segment of the report.  GDT sent a list of manufacturers who subscribed to the Europool data.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA understood from the 2006 worldwide sales data sent by GDT that Goodyear and Sumitomo were major tyre manufacturers; we noted Maxxis were not one of the top 10 companies listed. We also noted Maxxis did not subscribe to the Europool data.  We considered, however, that the ad did not make clear the basis of the claim the only economically-priced tyre from the major manufacturers" and that readers could therefore incorrectly infer that Maxxis were included in the comparison. We also considered that GDT had not sent sufficient evidence to show Maxxis were not a "major manufacturer" or to justify their exclusion from the claim. Because the ad did not make clear the basis of the claim, and because we had not seen sufficient evidence to justify Maxxis exclusion, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 19.1 (Other comparisons).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told GDT to make clear the basis of their claims and to ensure their comparisons were fair in future. We advised them to seek advice from the CAP Copy Advice team in future.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)