Ad description
Claims on www.bar-sales.co.uk/www.barbour-sales.com, offering Barbour branded products, featured various clothing and luggage products with discounts of up to 58%. Individual product pages included additional information and the text "Manufactured by: Barbour".
Issue
One complainant challenged whether the claims were misleading, because they implied that the Barbour clothing featured was authentic. She believed that the advertiser was not selling genuine products and questioned whether the claims could be substantiated.
Response
Barbour Sale did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by Barbour Sale's lack of substantive response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code clause 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 the future.
Because Barbour Sale did not provide any evidence to prove that the products they were selling were authentic items manufactured by Barbour, we concluded that the claims were misleading.
The claims breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 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), 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).
Action
The claims must not appear again in their current form. We told Barbour Sale to ensure they did not claim or imply that their products were genuine branded products, unless they had evidence to prove that this was the case. We referred the matter to CAP's Compliance team.
