Background
Summary of Council decision:
Three issues were investigated. One was Upheld, one was Not upheld, and the other was informally resolved after the advertiser agreed to amend or withdraw their advertising.
Ad description
A website, www.walkdengroup.co.uk, seen in November 2016, promoted a spray-on coating for vehicles. Text on the homepage stated, “The Walkden Group is an authorised application centre of excellence for Industrial Polymer Inc. World Wide Network and we have many years of experience in applying the products which are the Strongest and Toughest Coatings in the World to the automotive industry. Now nearly twice as strong as its nearest competitor with the introduction of the EPICTM range”. Text further down the page stated, “World' [sic] Toughest & Strongest Spray on protective polymer liner applications”. Text on a page titled “About IP 1000” stated, “Toughest and Strongest Spray on Polymer Liner in the World”. Similar claims appeared across the website.
Issue
European Polymer Products Group Ltd challenged whether the following claims were misleading and could be substantiated:
1. "The Walkden Group is an authorised application centre of excellence for Industrial Polymer Inc. World Wide Network"; and
2. the “strongest” and “toughest”.
Response
1. Walkden Group Ltd said they had been a dealer for the manufacturer's product since 2003, and that they were a recognised training centre for the UK distributor and project consultants both in the UK and overseas. They provided a letter from the manufacturer confirming that the Walkden Group was an application centre of excellence, in the application of their spray-on liner products.
2. Walkden Group believed IP1000 was without question the strongest and toughest spray-on liner in the world. They said the claims denoted tensile strength, tear strength and hardness tests. They said all the test criteria and results of Industrial Polymer Inc – the manufacturer of their products – were independently tested and were fully documented and published on their website.
They provided information taken from the manufacturer’s website showing a list of test results such as tensile strength, and noted that the website stated that the product was the “World’s Toughest Spray Liner”. They also provided information which they said had previously appeared on the complainant’s website showing test results for similar properties, including a lower figure for tensile strength.
They provided a spreadsheet which outlined the tensile strength, tear strength and hardness figures for the IP Epic and IP 1000 products, alongside what they understood to be the figures for six other products, including the complainant’s. They said the figures were available on the manufacturers’ websites if it was looked into in detail; some had been taken off but were still accessible. They said they were prepared to undertake the services of the manufacturer to verify them.
They also provided some certificates of calibration, which apparently related to the equipment used by the manufacturer. They set out the basic technique used for evaluating physical properties of reactive polyurethane coatings in the manufacturer’s testing of their own product.
They said they were willing to reflect on their website that it was the IP 1000 Epic product that was the strongest and toughest, providing an analytical report showing the tensile and tear strengths, among other properties, of the Epic product, as well as a technical data sheet.
Assessment
1. Not upheld
The ASA understood that the audience for the service offered by the Walkden Group was likely to be primarily business customers, and we considered the ad from that perspective. We considered that traders would understand from the claim that the manufacturer, Industrial Polymer Inc, had authorised the advertiser as an application centre of excellence. We understood from the documents supplied that that was the case, and we therefore concluded that the claim was not misleading.
On that point, 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. (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.
2. Upheld
We considered that traders would understand from the claims that the coating products the Walkden Group used were stronger and tougher than all other competing products across the world. We therefore expected to see evidence showing that their product had been tested in comparison with all other competitors, under appropriate test conditions, and that it had been demonstrated that it was the strongest and toughest.
In relation to the “About IP1000” page, we noted that the product referred to was specifically the one called “IP1000”, with references to its having been invented in 1995 and giving a figure for its tensile strength. However, we noted that there was an ‘Epic’ version which was supposedly stronger, and we considered that undermined the claim that IP1000 was the strongest. We noted that Walkden Group believed it was the Epic version that was specifically the strongest/toughest, but we considered that the page did not make that clear. We acknowledged that they were willing to make amendments to clarify that.
On the home page, the claims were less specific, stating “the products which are the Strongest and Toughest Coatings in the World to the automotive industry” and “World' [sic] Toughest & Strongest Spray on protective polymer liner applications”. We also noted that on the page it said, “Now nearly twice as strong as its nearest competitor with the introduction of the EPIC™ range”, which we considered a suggestion that the original product was also stronger than products by competitors of that manufacturer, albeit that this page did make clear that the Epic version of the product was stronger than the original version.
We noted the spreadsheet Walkden Group had provided which outlined the tensile strength, tear strength, and hardness figures for the IP Epic and IP 1000 products, alongside what they understood to be the figures for six other products, including the complainant’s. We also noted the performance figures for several other products, including that of the complainant’s, which had been published on the complainant’s website in the past. Those figures indicated that the Epic product performed better than the other products on which they had provided information. However, we were not able to view a methodology or any further information about how the results were arrived at, there was no evidence that all results had been achieved using the same methodology, and it was not clear whether figures had been provided for all relevant competitors.
The complainant, European Polymer Products Group Ltd, provided a report which documented directly comparative testing of their product against the IP1000 product (though not the Epic version). It concluded that the complainant’s product was stronger, stiffer, harder and had higher tear strength and density than the advertiser’s product. Walkden Group disputed the results of that report, and highlighted a number of issues which they believed undermined those results. Notwithstanding that, Walkden Group were unable to provide their own comparative evidence, including methodology that showed their products were superior to their competitor’s products when tested under appropriate and identical conditions.
Because we had not seen comparative evidence demonstrating that the product Walkden Group used was the strongest and toughest product in the world, we concluded that the claims were misleading.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) 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 3.33 3.33 Marketing communications that include a comparison with an identifiable competitor must not mislead, or be likely to mislead, the consumer about either the advertised product or the competing product. (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Walkden Group Ltd not to claim that their products were the strongest and toughest in the world in the absence of adequate comparative evidence to substantiate the claim.
