Free or not so Free? That is the Question

With the apparent witch hunt of the main protagonists behind the recent collapse in the financial system and a media industry still hyper-vigilant after last year's high profile phone-in scandals, attention is widening to other consumer-facing business relationships - in our case, sales promotion. Our friends at PromoVeritas specialise in ensuring that promoters and agencies play by the rules, and they kindly gave us permission to reproduce content from their recent newsletter for this post. 

You can't get round it with tiny Terms and Conditions either!

Of particular concern for anyone planning a Sales Promotion campaign is the small but powerful word FREE. The most compelling word for any promotional headline has to mean what it says. So, in addition to pre-existing CAP Code¹ rules on the matter, the EU's UCPD² now says that FREE can only be used if "consumers pay no more than the minimum unavoidable cost of responding to the promotion". 

A few recent examples illustrate how easy it is to fall foul of this :

1. The Mail On Sunday offered readers a ‘free home energy monitor by simply phoning a special hotline on and collecting three passwords’. This number however was charged at 30p a minute. In its defence to the ASA, The Mail claimed that readers could also enter via a standard rate number. However, as this was not made clear in the text and the number was their generic contact number which was listed on a separate page, the ASA judged the offer to be misleading and banned it from being shown again in its current form.
2. A Pinnacle Health catalogue claimed "Omega 3 Giveaway - Buy One, Get One Free". A customer ordered 360 tablets, expecting to receive a further 360 free, but in fact was told that her order price was for 180. The other 180 were the free tablets! Again the ASA determined that consumers would presume that a “Buy One Get One Free” claim would mean buy one product at the stated price and get a second of the same product at no extra cost. The advert was deemed to be misleading and in breach.
3. A similar situation occurred with a “Buy One Chair, Get Another Matching Chair Free" provided by Mobility Group. The complainant only wanted one chair and was offered it at half the stated price. She complained that the BOGOF was not in fact genuine. In the absence of evidence from the promoter that the purchase price of one chair was fair and that the second chair was genuinely free, the ASA felt that customers were unable to compare the price of the product when sold outside of the promotion with a product that was sold under the promotional offer. Therefore the advert was in breach of various sections of the CAP Code and was stopped.

Unfortunately cases like these are all too common and without the use of an independent verification service, cases like this will continue to undermine consumer trust in promotions. This is obviously to the detriment of the sales promotion industry as a whole and therefore reflects badly on all of us. Providers like PromoVeritas are perfectly placed to ensure that rules are obeyed and consumers can participate in promotions with confidence.

1. Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion & Direct Marketing which is administered by the Advertising Standards Authority

2. The new EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive