Ad description
A YouTube video and poster ad for a self-tanning product manufactured by St. Moriz:
a. The YouTube video, seen in June 2017, featured a surf lifesaver delivering a woman a bottle of self-tanning product, cut with a promotional trailer for the film Baywatch, and included on-screen text which stated “No. 1 claim based on volume sales IRI data 52 week period ending 9/7/16 …” and “ST. MORIZ UK’S NO. 1 TAN”. The video also included voice-over which stated “Featuring St. Moriz the UK’s No. 1 tan”. The claim was later repeated in the voice-over.
b. The poster, seen on 26 June 2017, included an image of a woman in a red swimsuit and text which stated “Real Fake? ST. MORIZ UK’S NO. 1 SELF TAN*”. Small text at the bottom right-hand corner of the poster stated “IRI JULY 16 stmoriz.co.uk”.
Issue
PZ Cussons challenged whether the comparative claim “No 1. in the UK” was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Hothouse Partnerships Ltd t/a St Moriz said they did not believe that the ad was likely to or could have materially misled anyone because they had clearly relied on data purchased from a data research company which evidenced that St Moriz had in fact the highest volume of sales compared to the other tanning brands in the UK. They said they purchased the data each year so that they could consider the sales data from the major retailers of their product and competitor sales. They believed, as they held independent market evidence that gave a robust and true comparison of sales in the market, their brand had the highest volume of sales. They understood that St Moriz had the highest volume of sales compared to all of the other brands, which they interpreted, for the purpose of the ad, to mean that St Moriz was the UK’s No. 1 Tan brand/ UK’s No. 1 Self Tan. They believed the ad clearly stated that the claim was based on the data as at July 2016 (with the YouTube Video referring to “No. 1 claim based on volume sales IRI data 52 week period ending 9/7/16.”). They further said they appreciated there was masked data in that report, as they were aware their brand was not fully represented.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered consumers would understand the claim “ST. MORIZ UK’S NO. 1 TAN” to mean that St Moriz was the best-selling self-tanning product in the UK.
We reviewed the evidence provided to us by the advertiser. St Moriz provided a summary of comparative data that compared their own sales figures with their competitors’ sales figures based on data collected by an independent data research company. However, either their summary appeared to have inflated St Moriz's volume of sales by adding some of the individual products’ sales figures to the overall total sales figures when those figures were already included as part of the total sales figure or the data had been collected, presented and applied for St Moriz in a different way to their competitors – a method which we considered would render the dataset unreliable.
Furthermore, we understood that the data had been subject to masking, whereby some retailers did not provide their volume of sales figures for certain products, including St Moriz’s own product, as it was commercially sensitive. We did not consider that a data set that did not account for a significant proportion of the market, due to such masking, was sufficiently robust to make a “best-selling” comparative claim.
Because we had not seen objective comparative evidence in relation to all relevant products across the market, and because St Moriz did not have the best-selling product based on the data provided, we concluded that the ads were misleading.
The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so. 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. (Misleading advertising) 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 ads must not appear again in their current form. We told St Moriz to remove the claim “UK’s No.1 Tan” and ensure that their future comparative claims were substantiated with adequate evidence.
