Tesco Ads Banned By Advertising Watchdog

Wed, 30 Jun 2010

 
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Tesco has been banned from showing a "misleading" national TV and press advertising campaign by the Advertising Standards Authority following a complaint by Asda .

The ads, which ran last October, promoted price comparisons between products at Tesco and closest supermarket rival Asda .

The press ad showed green Asda shopping baskets stacked against a taller pile of blue Tesco baskets with text over the latter stating 1,117,000 baskets cheaper, while the TV ad stated that shopping was cheaper for "over one million Tesco customers".

The ASA ruled that both ads were misleading because Tesco listed more than 31,000 lines on Tesco.com, but only matched around 12,000 of those with Asda .

It also described the reference to "baskets" in the ads as misleading because Tesco could not match all the items in each basket, and in some cases matched just one item in a basket.

"Because it was not clear whether they were comparing half of the contents of each basket, half the total purchases or half of the lines they stocked we concluded the claim was ambiguous and therefore misleading," the ASA said.

However, the ASA did not uphold Asda's complaint that the press ad compared Tesco’s less expensive in-store prices with Asda's online prices.

The advertising regulator said both Tesco adverts must not appear again in their current form.