ASA Adjudication on Procter & Gamble (Health & Beauty Care) Ltd

Ad

An e-mail and national press ad for Olay self-tanning moisturiser.

a. The e-mail showed two pictures of the product and stated "How to look good naked for only £5.99*+ … Olay Complete Everyday Sunshine body moisturiser has dazzled the opposition in an independent, consumer test on gradual tanners for Channel 4's How to look good naked poll.* … ". The small print stated "*Best mass market moisturiser with sunless tanner in C4's How to look good naked poll. + Recommended retail price …"

b. The press ad showed two pictures of the product and stated "How to look good naked for only £6.99*". Underneath the image of the product, text stated "Best mass market** moisturiser with sunless tanner in C4's How to look good naked poll" and the small print stated "*Recommended retail price **Under £10. Whilst stocks last".

Issue

MakeBelieve Beauty Ltd, who produced the Make Believe Tan Extender, believed the ads misleadingly implied that Olay Complete Everyday Sunshine body moisturizer came top of the Channel 4 poll, whereas they understood their product had come first in the poll.

CAP Code

Response

Procter & Gamble (P&G) explained that the Make Believe Tan Extender had come first in the poll for the Channel 4 programme How to look good naked. They said they had not claimed either explicitly or by implication that the Olay moisturiser had come first; they explained that it had come second in the poll and was the top mass market product tested. They said they defined a mass market moisturiser as a product priced at less than £10 and their product, with a recommended retail price of less than £6, was a mass market one, whereas Make Believe Tan Extender typically retailed for over £20.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted the Channel 4 poll had not distinguished between products priced over and under £10 and had tested only four products priced at £4.99, £5.99, £21 and £25. We noted the text " ... dazzled the opposition in an independent, consumer test on gradual tanners for Channel 4's How to look good naked poll*" in ad (a) and considered it implied that the product had come first in the Channel 4 poll. We noted P&G had included small print in ad (b) that stated "Under £10", which should have been included in ad (a) as well, but we concluded that text was not prominent enough to make clear how P&G defined "mass market". We considered that the small print "Best mass market moisturiser with sunless tanner in C4's How to look good naked poll", in both ads, was not sufficient to explain that the Olay product was one of two products under £10 in the poll of only four products in which price had not been a factor. Because of that, we concluded that the ads were misleading.

The ads breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 19.1 (Other comparisons).

Action

The approach should not be repeated.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)