Tesco has scored a win over Safeway after claiming its supermarket
rival had manipulated price comparisons in an ad to imply it was
cheaper.
The row surrounded a regional press ad for Safeway which carried the
headline, ’Mum says Tesco aren’t very good at sums.’
The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the ad, by Bates Dorland,
was misleading and that the headline should not be used again.
Tesco complained that the ad, featuring receipts from Tesco and Safeway
for the same 19 items, was unfair because 85 per cent of the claimed
savings came from only four items and Safeway used special offer
products to imply it was 11.4 per cent cheaper.
Meanwhile, Harvey Nichols has been censured by the ASA for running a
magazine ad which demeaned women and trivialised childbirth.
Travis Sennett Harari’s ad showed the lower legs of a woman who had just
given birth wearing a pair of gold stiletto sandals. The headline
announced: ’A new shoe department is born.’
The ASA has also clashed again with City Trading, two years after the
company unsuccessfully appealed to the High Court to overturn an ASA
ruling against it.
The authority has ordered a mail-order ad in the national press - which
promoted a ’potency pill’ called Vigorex, a drug it claimed had ’swept
America’ - to be changed. The ASA backed complaints that the ad implied
the pill was Viagra.
