ASA Adjudication on Coty UK Ltd

Ad

A TV ad showed Kate Moss using Rimmel's Lasting Finish Minerals Foundation and going to a tennis match. Close-ups of her face were shown and the voice-over stated "Lasts for up to 12 hours - perfect finish." Text at the bottom of the screen stated "12 HR WEAR" and "20 out of 99 women agreed" was shown in smaller text in the top right corner of the screen. The voice-over concluded "New Lasting Finish Minerals Foundation. And also available as Lasting Finish Liquid Foundation from Rimmel London".

Issue

Three viewers challenged whether the claims "Lasts up to 12 hours" and "12 HR WEAR" were misleading, because they were contradicted by the statement "20 out of 99 women agreed".

BCAP TV Code

Response

Coty UK Ltd trading as Rimmel London (Rimmel) said they carried out testing to support any claims and for the claim to be acceptable they believed they needed 10% of women to agree with it.  In this case they said the tests exceeded that 10% because 20 out of 99 women (20%) believed the product lasted 12 hours.  In addition they said they had added the test results as an on-screen super to avoid misleading consumers.

Clearcast provided the details of the study, which showed that 20% of panellists thought that cover lasted for 12 to 13 hours and an additional 7% thought it lasted more that 14 hours; 19% of panellists thought that the cover lasted for 10 to 11 hours and 30% 8 to 9 hours.  They said the data supported the claim "up to 12 hours", because they had based their reasoning on the same principle as an "up to" or "from" claim in a retail message, where around 10% of the products or services advertised should usually be at the "up to" or "from" price.  They said they had added qualifying on-screen text showing "20 out of 99 women agreed", to provide more information and make clear that the claim was based on a consumer study.  They stated voice-over claims were considered to have a stronger message than an on-screen claim, but they were satisfied the voice-over ("Lasts for UP TO 12 hours") qualified the "12 HR WEAR" on-screen message.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA noted that Clearcast believed the data supported the claim "up to 12 hours" because 10% of respondents to the survey agreed.  We considered that, although that reasoning could generally support an "up to" claim, it was not the only factor that should be taken into account; the spread of results and quality of data were also significant factors that needed to be taken into account when assessing a cosmetic or efficacy "up to" claim.  In this case, we noted the results of Rimmel's survey showed that 27% of respondents thought that cover lasted for 12 hours or more, 46% for 10 hours or more and 76% for 8 hours or more.  We therefore considered the survey demonstrated that most respondents believed the powder lasted 8 hours or more and that that supported the "up to 12 hours" claim.  

We acknowledged that the on-screen super "20 out of 99 women agreed" might be understood by some viewers to suggest that the claim "lasts up to 12 hours" was not supported by Rimmel's tests, but because the advertiser had provided evidence that showed most respondents believed the powder lasted for 8 hours or more, we concluded the ad was not misleading.

We investigated the ad under CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Codes rules 5.1.1 (Misleading advertising), 5.2.1 (Evidence) and 5.4.2 (Superimposed text) but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)