P&G ad banned for bad survey and misleading claims
Proctor and Gamble UK has been forced to pull a TV ad due to misleading claims based on a poorly designed survey.
The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority felt that the survey results were too likely to biased by the invitation process, which included providing free samples of Clairol Nice ‘n’ Easy (the advertised product) prior to the survey and a entry in a drawing for a photo shoot in New York. The ASA also felt that surveys might have been completed by people who weren’t readers of the Red magazine. So the claim in the ad of “Recommended by 93% of Red readers” was not considered credible.
Nice to see someone in advertising standing up for good research practices, but an expensive mistake for P&G who cannot broadcast the ad again in its current form.
Idiosyncratically,
Mike Pritchard
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_46477.htm
Jaremy
July 13th, 2009 at 11:33 pm #
Great when people actually pay attention to research. I wonder if this happens at all in the US. Always funny to see the “4 of 5 doctors recommend”… Which doctors? Based on what study? The lack of transparency in those types of commercials is astounding.