United Kingdom

[GB] Virgin Media Broadband Radio Advertisement Cleared by the Advertising Standards Authority

IRIS 2008-3:1/19

David Goldberg

deeJgee Research/Consultancy

An adjudication by the UK Advertising Standards Authority Council (Broadcast) has decided that a radio advertisement for Virgin Media Broadband did not infringe the British Code of Advertising Practice Radio Advertising Code, Section 3, concerning “Misleadingness”. A parallel adjudication by the Advertising Standards Authority Council (Non- broadcast) also cleared Virgin in respect of a national press advertisement headed “Truth, Lies and Broadband”.

In total, 10 claims were the subject of the adjudication. However, most of the objections, made by both the general public and competitors (British Sky Broadcasting Ltd and Talk Talk Telecom Ltd), complained about the advertisement’s claim that Virgin did not “use copper wire”. Objectors argued that some of the co-axial cable used between people’s homes and the network is made from copper.

However, the ASA found that, whilst this was the case, the main point of Virgin’s claim focused on the technical performance of its cable rather, than its component materials per se.


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This article has been published in IRIS Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory.