The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an ad Asda launched on television on 24 October last year that claimed independent price checker Skuudle had found Asda was cheaper on hundreds more branded products than Argos.
The ad, created by Saatchi & Saatchi, claimed Asda was cheaper on 551 branded products and Argos was cheaper on only 139 products.
Creative featured a voiceover that claimed, "Asda had this many branded products cheaper than Argos…including all these great electronics brands," while on screen a box tagged, "Asda 551 cheaper" was unwrapped to reveal logos of nine electronics brands.
However, Argos objected to the ad because its own research carried out on 20 October showed Asda was cheaper on 846 products, while Argos sold 336 cheaper branded products.
Argos also objected to the fact that the specific comparison to electronic brands was unfair because it did not include information about the number of products included in the comparison.
The ASA accepted that both companies' research was valid because it took into account different methods of collecting the data, but ruled the way Asda advertised its research was misleading.
The ad watchdog came down on the side of Argos after ruling that the terms and conditions included in the ad and on the Asda website were too limited.
The supermarket giant was also rapped for implying all the electronics brands it featured in the ad could be found cheaper at Asda, whereas in actual fact Argos was cheaper than Asda for some products from six of the nine brands showcased in the ad.
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