NEWS2 July 2009
UK— The Advertising Standards Authority has told Procter & Gamble to stop broadcasting a TV ad for Clairol Nice ’n Easy hair dye, because claims made in the ad on the basis of survey results are ‘likely to mislead’.
The ad, made by Grey London, said: “93% of Red magazine readers would recommend Nice ’n Easy to a friend. The other 7% probably don’t have any friends.” It also stated in on-screen text that the figures referred to “participants in a survey of 245 Red magazine readers, April 2008”.
In response to a complaint, the ASA challenged P&G over the claims, and discovered that survey participants had been recruited via an email sent to members of the Red Reader Panel, but that recipients could also invite friends to take part. Participants were sent a free sample of the hair dye and a questionnaire, and were offered a prize of a £50 John Lewis voucher or a trip to New York for completing the survey.
In an adjudication published yesterday, the ASA said that although prize winners were selected at random, “respondents may have been inclined to be less than impartial in their survey responses in order to stand a better chance of winning”.
It also said: “We considered it was possible that some of the 245 people who completed the survey might not have been Red readers; they might have said they were just to enter the prize draw.”
As a result the ASA concluded that “the survey’s results did not substantiate the claims ‘93% of Red magazine readers would recommend Nice ’n Easy to a friend’ and ‘Recommended by 93% of Red readers’ and those claims were likely to mislead.”
The authority said the ad breached its standards code and must not be broadcast again in its current form.