Ad description

A sponsored post on Facebook appeared as a "Suggested Game" and promoted a game titled "Throne Rush". It included an image of a battle scene featuring a large army, alongside the text "Cut your way to the Throne!".

Issue

Two complainants, who believed the image used was from another game (Total War) challenged whether the ad was misleading

Response

Nexters Ltd did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.

Assessment

The ASA was concerned by Nexters lack of substantive response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule  1.7 1.7 Any unreasonable delay in responding to the ASA's enquiries will normally be considered a breach of the Code.  (Unreasonable delay). We reminded them of their responsibility to provide a substantive response to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.

We considered consumers would understand from the ad that the featured image was of game play from the advertised game Throne Rush. However, because of the lack of evidence demonstrating that the featured image was of the advertised game, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules  3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.    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 (Substantiation).

Action

The ad should not appear again in its current form. We told Nexters Ltd to ensure it held evidence demonstrating that ads featured accurate images of the featured game.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

1.7     3.1     3.11     3.3    


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