Ad description
A website for Carling lager, visited on 9 May 2011, featured a cartoon timeline that explained how their lager was made. The cartoon showed lorries with the word “Malt” written on the side making deliveries to the brewery and text next to the lorries read “BARLEY IS MALTED AT VARIOUS TEMPERATURES AND TIMES TO GIVE EACH BEER ITS DISTINCT COLOUR, FLAVOUR AND AROMA”. The cartoon then showed water, sugar, hops and yeast being added to the malted barley and explained the various brewing processes that were needed to create the finished product.
Issue
BrewDog Ltd challenged whether the website was misleading because it omitted to state that wheat and other malted barley substitutes were added during the brewing process.
Response
Molson Coors Brewing Company (UK) Ltd t/a Carling (Molson Coors) stated that the cartoon had been intended to provide high level educational material to describe how their beer is brewed and that it had appeared on the website since December 2007. They said it was not intended to go into the minutiae of every ingredient or every detail of the brewing process as this would have made it unreadable. They stated that copies were placed on walls around their offices to help employees, who did not work in the brewery, to understand the basics of how they made their beer.
Molson Coors stated that the only "malted barley substitutes" used in the making of Carling were sugar (or brewing syrup) and wheat. They pointed out that they had mentioned sugar because it was always added during the brewing process but that they had not mentioned wheat because it was not always added. They said two of their four breweries did not use wheat and they therefore considered that it would have been no more accurate to have included wheat in the cartoon. They added that, when wheat was introduced, it was done so as a substitute for sugar because it provided a cost benefit and improved head performance. They emphasised that it was not used as a substitute for barley and that the barley content did not differ significantly when wheat was added. They pointed out that their bottles and cans all stated that wheat was sometimes used and that they had not therefore made an attempt to hide this fact.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA noted that the cartoon was intended to provide a high level overview of the Carling brewing process and we considered that, although it was quite detailed, readers would not expect it to provide a complete explanation of how the lager was made. We noted that wheat was not always used in the brewing process and we therefore considered that the cartoon had not omitted material information that consumers needed to make informed decisions about whether or not to buy the product. We concluded the cartoon 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.
3.2
3.2
Obvious exaggerations ("puffery") and claims that the average consumer who sees the marketing communication is unlikely to take literally are allowed provided they do not materially mislead.
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.
