ASA Adjudication on The Wood Window Alliance

Ad

A trade press ad was headlined "Wood A Plastic D Aluminium D (Now wood comes top of the class for climate change, too)". Text underneath stated "WOOD. AT THE HEART OF A GOOD WINDOW Our wood windows already come top of the class for looks, performance and service life. Now BRE's new Green Guide confirms what we've been saying all along - they're the best choice to help combat climate change ...". Small print stated "Climate Change Indicator ratings for domestic wood, PVC-U and powder coated aluminium windows. Wood windows also receive the highest overall ratings (A+ or A) in the Green Guide."

Issue

The British Plastics Federation's Windows Group challenged whether the comparison between wood, PVC-U and aluminium windows was misleading.

CAP Code

Response

The Wood Window Alliance (WWA) said they were a campaign launched by a group of major window manufacturers and suppliers to promote the advantages of using wood windows.  They said, as part of their strategic plan of activity during 2008, the campaign planned to use the results of the analysis of wood windows in the new Building Research Establishment (BRE) Green Guide as the basis of an advertising campaign. They said the ads ran in a range of construction and architectural trade publications.

WWA said the Green Guide provided an assessment of the whole environmental impact of a construction product or material and used a standardised methodology to analyse the impacts of a products production, raw materials, manufacture and disposal against 13 categories of environmental damage from cradle to grave; the category results were expressed as a rating from A to E.  They said the results from the individual impact categories were combined to give an overall product rating from A+ to E.  They asserted that the categories were weighted in calculating the overall rating to take account of the variation in the extent of their overall impact on the environment.  

WWA asserted that, when they received the initial results, it was clear to them that wood windows had a clear advantage over their competitor materials in the Climate Change Indicator category which assessed a materials potential contribution to global warming as a result of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with its production.  

WWA said the ad was intended to link the letter-based rating system to traditional school exam marking to establish the impression that wood windows were top of the class for combating climate change.  They asserted that the text clearly explained that the claim added to the existing proposition of the benefits of wood windows in terms of looks, performance and service life, and was based on the BREs Green Guide analysis and rating. They believed the footnote clarified that the ratings given in the headline were drawn from the Climate Change Indicator ratings, not the overall ratings.  They said the only reference to the overall ratings in the ad was in the second sentence of the footnote, where it stated that, in addition to the Climate Change Indicator rating, wood windows were rated in the two highest overall rating categories.

WWA argued that the ad clearly explained that the claim was based on the Climate Change Indicator rating, not the overall product rating in the Green Guide. They said they were well aware that plastic windows achieved higher ratings in other categories but believed it was unreasonable to expect a qualification of that nature in a competitors ad campaign. They believed the ad made clear that the comparison was not based on the overall rating, and that the claim did not relate to the overall comparisons.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted WWAs comments. We noted the Green Guide evaluated the  environmental impact of building materials and that one of the aspects it looked at was "Climate Change", which assessed a materials potential contribution to global warming as a result of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with its production. We noted the small print stated "^Climate Change Indicator ratings for domestic wood, PVC-U and powder coated aluminium windows. Wood windows also receive the highest overall ratings (A+ or A) in the Green Guide" and considered that that made clear that the grades in the body copy were not the overall grades in the Green Guide. We considered, however, that without qualification the claims "Now wood comes top of the class for climate change, too" and ... theyre the best choice to help combat climate change" were ambiguous and readers could infer from the ad that the grades quoted in the body copy were for the products environmental impact as a whole, not just one aspect. We considered that the ad implied plastic and aluminium had a much lower rating than wood in terms of their overall environmental impact. We noted plastic had achieved the same overall rating in the Green Guide as wood and considered that the ad, therefore, gave a misleading impression of the overall environmental performance of the materials shown. We concluded the ad breached the Code.  

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 7.1 (Truthfulness), 19.1 (Other comparisons) and 49.1 (Environmental claims).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)