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

Ad

A TV ad, for Clairol Nice 'n' Easy hair dye, showed a woman deciding whether to buy a pair of red stilettos. A voice-over stated "93% of Red magazine readers would recommend Nice 'n' Easy to a friend. The other 7% probably don't have any friends". On-screen text stated "Participants in a survey of 245 Red magazine readers, April 2008". The ad then showed a photograph of the product packaging; large on-screen text stated "Recommended by 93% of Red readers". After other scenes were shown, the ad showed that same photograph and text again, but this time with small on-screen text which stated "245 Respondents".

Issue

The ASA challenged whether the claims "93% of Red magazine readers would recommend Nice 'n' Easy to a friend" and "Recommended by 93% of Red readers" were misleading.  We considered the way the survey had been conducted and the particpants selected did not support the claims.

BCAP TV Code

Response

Procter & Gamble (P&G) explained how the survey participants were selected: an e-mail was sent exclusively to people who had registered (via a form inserted into subscription copies of Red magazine) as members of the Red Reader Panel, which was set up to trial consumer products.  The e-mail informed readers that Red magazine and Nice 'n' Easy had "teamed up to offer you the chance to be a shade braver by using Nice 'n' Easy" and also stated that respondents could win a trip to New York to star in a Red photoshoot, plus one of 100 John Lewis vouchers worth £50 each.  Respondents clicked through to a site where they registered their details and chose which shade of Nice 'n' Easy they wanted to try.  They were also invited to forward the link to a friend.  P&G said all respondents were asked to confirm they were Red readers; those who said they did not read Red magazine were excluded from the trial.  Otherwise they were sent a free sample of Nice 'n' Easy and a survey, which asked respondents about their hair colouring habits and what they thought of Nice 'n' Easy.  One of the questions asked whether respondents strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed that they would recommend Nice 'n' Easy to a friend.  To win a trip to New York, respondents had to complete and return the survey, write a short story and send a picture of themselves with their new hair colour.  To win a £50 John Lewis voucher, respondents had to complete and return the survey only.  The survey was completed and returned by 245 people by the closing date and 93% of those people confirmed in the survey that they would recommend the product to a friend.

P&G submitted a copy of the e-mail that was sent to Red Reader Panel members, the survey and the relevant extract of the survey results.  They said there was no evidence to suggest that respondents might not have used their sample, or that friends who were sent the link were not Red readers but said they were merely to enter the prize draw, or that participants might have been biased towards responding positively.  They pointed out that the question of whether respondents would recommend the product to a friend was one of 16 questions asked, and no particular weighting was given to that question.  They said the terms and conditions made clear that the winners of the John Lewis vouchers would be chosen at random. There was therefore no reason for respondents to believe their chance of winning was subject to any vetting process.

Clearcast were satisfied that the survey's results substantiated the claim.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA considered viewers were likely to infer from the ad that the survey was of Red readers who already used or had tried Nice 'n' Easy and that, of 245 respondents, 93% said they would recommend the product to a friend.

We noted the survey respondents had been selected from subscribers to Red who had previously registered their interest in trialling product samples.  We considered subscribers to Red were likely to be typically representative of Red readers as a whole; however, we also noted that those participating in the survey had volunteered themselves for the exercise.  Those subscribers had been sent a free sample of Nice 'n' Easy in conjunction with an invitation (on the reverse of the survey) to enter a competition to win a trip to New York or a prize draw to win a £50 John Lewis voucher.  Respondents who wished to win the trip to New York had to, in addition to completing the survey, send a photo of themselves with their new hair colour and complete a short story about how they had been a shade braver in their life.  The three winners would be those entrants who, in the opinion of an independent judging panel, gave the most apt responses.  Respondents who wished to win a voucher had only to complete and return the survey.   

We noted the competition and prize draw had been used as incentives to encourage respondents to complete the survey.  We noted it was common practice to enter survey respondents into prize draws where the winner would be selected at random and we did not object.  However, we were concerned that the (winning) respondents entering the competition were selected on the merits of their competition entry and may have been inclined to be less than impartial in their survey responses in order to stand a better chance of winning.

We noted the link to the site where respondents chose their shade of Nice 'n' Easy could have been forwarded to friends of the Red Reader Panel.  We considered it was possible that some of the 245 people who completed the survey might not have been Red readers; they might have said they were just to enter the prize draw.

We concluded that the survey's results did not substantiate the claims "93% of Red magazine readers would recommend Nice 'n' Easy to a friend" and "Recommended by 93% of Red readers" and those claims were likely to mislead.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1.1 (Misleading advertising) and 5.2.1 (Evidence).

Action

The ad must not be broadcast again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)