Price wars are not new and, in fact, have been around as long as anyone can remember. But the public scrutiny of statements and claims made in marketing has never been more intense.
One of the UK's most admired brands and lauded for its socially responsible behaviour seems to be a habitual offender of the British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion (BCASP).
For the fourth successive occasion this year, Tesco's has had complaints about its advertising upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The Whopper
Complaints were received from the public about Tesco's brochure Price News.
The front page was headlined: "Find out for yourself why Tesco is Britain's best value supermarket" and featured a pair of scissors cutting through a 拢 sign accompanied by the claim "拢1bn off! Thousands of products now cheaper".
Inside the brochure, more claims were made, such as: "Knock years off your shopping bill"; "No other supermarket is more committed to cutting prices";
"The cheapest don't come any cheaper"; "We won't be beaten by any other supermarket's own label value range"...
You get the picture. And given it was Tesco's, there was a reasonable expectation that what it claimed had a ring of truth about it...
The whopper defence
Tesco's marketers argued that its claims were not based on prices alone but also referred to its wider range of services and customer benefits, which it claimed none of its competitors (ie Sainsbury's) could match.
It argued that, compared with other supermarkets of its size, it had more stores and that it monitored 10,000 prices each week and published competitors' prices online.
It also asserted that it offered a full range of store formats, an unsurpassed product range, a wide range of services and various customer benefits.
All this seems pretty defensible, doesn't it? Yet Tesco's didn't submit evidence to substantiate any of these claims.
ASA Ruling
The ASA considered that, in the context of a brochure that was entitled Price News and comprised mainly of price comparisons of branded goods, the statement "No other supermarket is more committed to cutting prices" would lead customers to assume the claim meant that, compared with other supermarkets, Tesco offered the lowest prices.
Given the powers of the ASA, it compelled Tesco to remove such a claim from its brochure and in the future Tesco will need to substantiate such claims.
The big stick
The ASA was set up in 1962 and has the power to intervene to stop an ad (non broadcast) which it considers contravenes the BCASP even if no complaint has been received from the public.
It is independent of both the government and the advertising industry and acts as a self-regulatory body for the advertising industry, overseeing non-broadcast advertisements in the UK.
It promotes "legal, decent, honest and truthful" advertising by means of the BCASP. The Committee's members include representatives from the advertising, sales promotion and media businesses and responds to all complaints in respect of non-broadcast advertisements made to it in writing by mail or online at http://www.asa.org.uk.
The ASA works to ensure that its guidelines are adopted and adhered to by all those in the marketing profession, from publishers to advertising and sales promotion companies and its activities include investigating complaints.
The ASA Codes apply to the following non-broadcast media:
The ASA's remit covers advertisements in paid-for space online, including banner and pop-up advertisements, sales promotion anywhere online and commercial emails. It does not cover general product information on home pages.
In order to comply with the BCASP, as well as other statutory and non-statutory codes of practice that govern advertising and labelling, marketers should observe the following checklist:
Ardi Kolah is author of 'Essential Law for Marketers' (Butterworth Heinemann, 拢25.00). Order online .