Ad description
A press ad for The Sunday Times Wine Club appearing in The Sunday Times newspaper on 9 March 2022, stated “Half Price White Bordeaux” and offered the wine for “six bottles for £74.94, just £12.49 per bottle”.
Issue
The complainant, who believed that the full price of the bottle had been artificially inflated, challenged whether the claim “Half Price” was misleading.
Response
Direct Wines Ltd provided sales data covering an eight-month period, from when the L’Epiphanie de Bordeaux Blanc 2020 was available to purchase in September 2021, including the period for which the promotion referenced in the ad. The data showed that 271 orders in total had been placed for a six-bottle case of L’Epiphanie de Bordeaux Blanc 2020, and 62 of those orders had been purchased using the Sunday Times Wine Club offer. A sales breakdown was also supplied, which showed the total order numbers for each quantity of L’Epiphanie bottle purchased up to a quantity of 120 bottles per order. That data also included the sales for the 2019 vintage, which was not referenced in the ad, as well as the 2020 vintage. Direct Wines also supplied sales data which detailed the number of L’Epiphanie bottles sold in three time periods: September 2021-October 2021, October 2021-December 2021, and December 2021-April 2022.
Direct Wines said that, alongside the press ad, they also ran several digital ads which outlined the Sunday Times Wine Club promotion. They confirmed that the half price offer of the six-bottle case was unique to the Sunday Times Wine Club and that the offer period ran from 3 February 2022 to 11 March 2022. During that period, in order to claim offer, consumers had to enter the specific URL address listed in the press ad or click on a link in one of the digital ads. They explained that during the eight-month period, the price of an individual bottle in a six-bottle case remained at £25 on the website. Consequently, when the offer was live, the six-bottle case was still sold at £25 per bottle to those who were not eligible for the Sunday Times Wine Club offer. They highlighted that the six-bottle case was not on offer at any other point during the eight-month period.
They also confirmed that the standard price of the bottle in a 12-bottle case was £22.50, rather than £25, as they offered a volume discount on the L’Epiphanie bottle purchased in quantities of 12 or more. They further stated that between October 2021 and December 2021, they ran a site wide promotion on the 12-bottle case, in which the price of an individual bottle was £12.49.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA considered that consumers would understand the savings claim in the ad to mean that a bottle of L’Epiphanie de Bordeaux Blanc 2020 was usually sold at £25 per bottle and that, by redeeming the Sunday Times Wine Club offer, they would be able to make a genuine saving of 50% against the usual selling price of the product. We therefore expected to see evidence to demonstrate that the bottle of wine was usually sold at £25.
Firstly, we noted that the offer was available for five weeks, and that it was the only promotion that had been applied to the six-bottle case during the eight-month period. As such, we understood that the six-bottle case had been consistently sold at the higher price of £25 per bottle before the Sunday Times Wine Club offer commenced. Furthermore, we noted that when the offer was live, the six -bottle case continued to be sold at £25 per bottle on the website to those who did not have access to the Sunday Times Wine Club link via the press ad (or the digital ads, which we did not assess as part of the complaint). We therefore considered that the cost of the six -bottle case was sold at the higher price of £25 for significantly longer than the promotional price.
We then assessed the sales data provided by Direct Wines. We noted that there was a total of 271 orders of the six-bottle case of L’Epiphanie de Bordeaux Blanc 2020, and that 62 of those offers had used the Sunday Times Wine Club offer. Therefore, we understood that 23% of the total orders of the six-bottle case had been at the promotional price. Consequently, we considered that the bulk of sales of the six-bottle case occurred at the higher price of £25 per bottle.
We also took the quantity of sales of other case sizes into consideration, along with the corresponding selling price per bottle. We noted that the price of L’Epiphanie Bordeaux had not been discounted in order quantities ranging from an individual bottle to a five-bottle case and, accordingly, had been sold at the higher price of £25 per bottle for the entire eight-month period, including the offer period. We also understood that the usual selling price per bottle of the 12-bottle case was £22.50. For that reason, we reviewed the number of sales of 12-bottle case orders, sold at £22.50 per bottle, to consider whether it would affect the usual selling price of the bottle. We noted that 838 orders, out of a total of 6,268 orders, had been placed for a 12-bottle case. We also noted that 4,638 orders, out of a total of 6,268 orders, had been placed for quantities of one to five bottles of L’Epiphanie. Whilst we acknowledged that those figures also included sales data for the 2019 Vintage which was not included in the Sunday Times Wine Club offer, we nonetheless considered that data indicated the majority of 2020 Vintage orders placed were low volume and had been sold at £25 per bottle.
For those reasons, we considered that Direct Wines were able to substantiate that the usual selling price of a bottle of L’Epiphanie de Bordeaux Blanc 2020 was £25 per bottle, and concluded that the claim in the ad represented a genuine saving of 50% against that price.
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), 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 3.17 3.17 Price statements must not mislead by omission, undue emphasis or distortion. They must relate to the product featured in the marketing communication. (Prices) but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action required.
