ASA Adjudication on Invincible Media Group

Ad

An online ad, for a competition entitled "Britain's Next Urban Superstar", stated "Urban Music Awards 2008 … launches the biggest television talent show, Britain's Next Urban Superstar … Have you got talent? Are you a singer? Street Dancer? … come and audition for a chance to: Win £5,000 A prestigious Urban Music Award Chance to perform at the Urban Music Awards Exposure on television show One year recording contract Twelve month recording studio time One music video …".

Issue

The complainant, who found that the '£5,000' prize was not a cash sum but was advance payment towards studio and recording costs, challenged whether the nature of the prizes had been adequately clarified.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Invincible Media Group (IMG) said the competition was officially advertised on the Urban Music Awards (UMA) website and the official myspace website and that both of these carried the full terms and conditions (t&cs) of the competition, which included clarification that the cash prize was to be used solely as an investment into a recording contract.  They explained that each year they gave volunteers the opportunity to help out with the award show and that the ad in this case had been posted onto a third party site by a volunteer.  They believed inexperience probably led to the t&cs being omitted from the ad, but asserted that that had not been done with the approval of official executives at UMA.  They believed the complainant, who had been identified to IMG, was aware of the t&cs of the competition and the nature of the prizes as a result of blog entries they had posted adjacent to them and pointed out that the application form for entry into the competition, which the complainant had signed, stated that the £5,000 prize was to be used strictly for recording studio costs.  They said no prizes had been withheld and all had been offered in line with the agreed t&cs of the competition.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA understood from the complainant that ads for "Britain's Next Urban Superstar" seen on some third party websites implied that part of the winning prize was £5,000 in cash.  We noted some promotional material submitted by the complainant stated "Win £5000" and considered that, without prominent qualification, the target audience for the competition was likely to infer from the claim that the cash was available to be spent as the winner chose. Although we acknowledged IMG's comments that the ad noticed by the complainant had been posted by a volunteer and without their approval, and that the t&cs printed on the competition's entry application form clarified the nature of the top prize, we also noted there were several examples, including within the news archive on the official UMA website and archive material from Flava TV, which broadcast the semi-finals of the competition, that referred to the £5,000 prize as "cash in [the winner's] back pocket" and "£5,000 cold cash".

We considered that the nature of the £5,000 prize had not been communicated clearly and was rendered ambiguous by conflicting messages conveyed in IMG's promotional material, officially approved and otherwise.  We concluded that the nature of the winning prize had not been adequately clarified prior to entry.

The promotion breached CAP Code clauses 27.4 (Sales promotion rules) and 34.1e (Significant conditions for promotions).

Action

We advised IMG to take greater care with future promotional material.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)