Ad description
An ad on the Quickie Divorce YouTube channel featured a woman speaking to camera. She stated, "Quick Divorce are firmly established as the UK's leading providers of online divorces. We've helped over one hundred thousand couples achieve a quick, simple, affordable and stress-free divorce."
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claim "UK's leading providers of online divorces" was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Quickie Divorce Ltd stated that the claim "UK's leading providers of online divorces" was unlikely to be viewed by consumers as being objective. They considered that consumers would understand that it was a subjective claim open to interpretation.
Quickie Divorce said that their competitors did not publish the total number of divorces that they had filed or the total number of people who had contacted them throughout the previous year. However, they referred to one of their competitor's website, which claimed that the majority of their divorce petitions were submitted to one particular County Court. Quickie Divorce stated that according to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the total number of divorce applications received at that specific County Court for 2013 was 2,385. Therefore, given that Quickie Divorce had submitted a total of 7,043 divorce petitions in 2013, they believed they were the UK's leading providers for online divorces.
Quickie Divorce further stated that in parts of 2013, they possessed 20% of the market share within their operating sector. That figure was determined when official figures taken from a quarterly report published by the MoJ revealed that 32,025 divorce petitions were filed between April and June 2013, a period during which Quickie Divorce had assisted a total of 6,486 individuals. The following report by the MoJ, stated that 28,427 petitions were filed for divorce between July and September, where Quickie Divorce assisted 6,395 clients during that period; therefore covering 22.5% of the market share. Additionally, 25,090 people contacted Quickie Divorce in 2013 and 11,564 individuals purchased services from Quickie Divorce.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted that Quickie Divorce believed that consumers would understand that the leading claim was subjective and open to interpretation. However, we considered that the statement "UK's leading providers of online divorces" would be regarded as a claim that the advertiser had the greatest share of the market and that they acted for clients in more filed divorces than any of their competitors.
We noted Quickie Divorce's view that the total number of individuals they had assisted between April and September 2013 corresponded to a significant proportion of the total number of filed divorces recorded by the MoJ in that period. However, we noted that Quickie Divorce had not shown that they acted for clients in this number of divorces and that they were unable to ascertain the total number of divorces worked on by their competitors during those periods, including the one competitor they had compared themselves against. We considered that, to substantiate claims of market leadership, Quickie Divorce should have provided detailed comparative data for their main competitors, illustrating that they acted on behalf of clients in a greater number of divorces. In the absence of such evidence, we concluded that their claim to be the "UK's leading providers of online divorces" had not been substantiated and was misleading. It therefore breached the Code.
The ad breached CAP Code rules 3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so. (Misleading Advertising), 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) and 3.38 3.38 Marketing communications that include a comparison with an unidentifiable competitor must not mislead, or be likely to mislead, the consumer. The elements of the comparison must not be selected to give the marketer an unrepresentative advantage. (Other Comparisons)
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Quickie Divorce Ltd that their future advertising must not include the claim that they are the "UK's leading providers of online divorces" unless they possess robust evidence to substantiate it.
