Ad description
A website for Kerrygold butter, www.kerrygold.co.uk, included a web page headed "Our advert" that featured a video ad. The video included a pack shot of the product that stated "Pure Irish Butter".
Issue
The complainant, who believed the butter was produced in Anglesey, challenged whether the claim "pure Irish butter" was misleading.
Response
Adams Foods Ltd (Adams Foods) said that 100% of the butter that went into Kerrygold was from Southern Ireland and none was produced in Anglesey, or the UK in general. For some export markets, including the UK, 25-kg blocks of Irish bulk butter were transported to the market and packed into smaller units there. They said that whilst the product was produced in Ireland it was packed in the UK and hence, as per legislator requirement, had a UK health code on the pack. They said they had used the slogan "Pure Irish Butter" for over ten years. They supplied a copy of their bulk butter specification for the butter used in Kerrygold, bought from the Irish Dairy Board, which was owned by Irish dairy co-ops and dairy farmers.
Assessment
Not upheld
The complainant believed the claim "Pure Irish Butter" was misleading because the pack of Kerrygold they purchased included a UK code on the pack. We understood this was solely because the butter had been packed into smaller units in the UK. Because the butter was produced in Ireland we concluded the claim "Pure Irish Butter" was not misleading.
We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules
3.1
3.1
Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
and
3.3
3.3
Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
(Misleading advertising) and
3.7
3.7
Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.
(Substantiation) but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
