Ad description
A direct mailing for a payday loan company addressed the recipient directly by name and offered short-term loans. Text stated "new customers pay even less. We're waiving our transmission fee, so you'll only pay £7. Simply use this promo code."
Issue
Two complainants challenged whether the ad was irresponsibly targeted because it was sent to their children.
Response
WDFC UK Ltd (Wonga) said that they did not offer loans to anyone under the age of 18 and that their marketing communications were not targeted at minors. They said they did not believe that they had acted irresponsibly, but regretted that marketing communications were sent to those under the age of 18. They explained that they employed three companies to obtain data on their behalf. They said that those companies sourced ove-18s who had opted-in to marketing communications. They pointed out that they and the relevant data management companies had since removed both children's data from their systems.
They confirmed that they had conducted an investigation into the complaint. They said that one of the complainant's children had entered their year of birth as 1990 on an online survey and opted-in to receiving marketing communications from third parties. They also said the other complainant's child had been incorrectly listed on the electoral roll. They pointed out that they also performed a number of internal checks to ensure recipients of their marketing communications were over-18, including postal address verification, screening details against electoral roll details and application of industry suppressions against the data. They said that the company who had provided the data for one of the complainants said that they used several checks to ensure that only data from those over the age of 18 was passed on. They also said the company were willing to add an over-18 tick box on their online survey to further control data collection. Wonga explained that, since receiving the complaint, they had also applied new checks to their system, including only sourcing details for over-19s and stating on the mailing that the consumer had received the material because they had opted in and were over 19.
Assessment
Not Upheld
The ASA acknowledged that one data management company had provided documentary evidence to demonstrate that the complainant's child had incorrectly entered their date of birth on the online survey. We also noted that the second data management company verified that the second complainant's child had been incorrectly entered on the electoral roll. We considered that, as a result of those errors, the data management companies and the advertiser had no reason to believe that the data was for children under the age of 18. Because we considered that the advertiser was not responsible for the errors that resulted in marketing communications being sent to children under 18, we concluded that the ad was not irresponsibly targeted.
We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.3 1.3 Marketing communications must be prepared with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society. (Responsible advertising) and 5.1 5.1 Marketing communications addressed to, targeted directly at or featuring children must contain nothing that is likely to result in their physical, mental or moral harm: (Children), but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
