Ad description
Two emails for Wine52, a wine and beer subscription service, sent to a subscriber.
a. The first email, received on 20 April 2024, was headed “Welcome to the Club!” and stated, “We’re thrilled you’ve joined us!”. It included several sub-headed sections, including a box in the body of the email with the sub-heading “Invite your friends today”. Text below stated, “Fancy a free case on us? Send a delicious wine to your friends and earn a free case […]". A hyperlinked “Send invite” button followed.
b. The second email, received on 24 April 2024, had the subject line “Get ambassador rewards”. Text below stated, “Nice one, you’re in the Club […] We think now is a good time to tell you how to get loads of great rewards from Wine52! It’s easy, every time you refer a friend they get their first case at 50% OFF and you get a FREE case of wine […]”. A hyperlinked “Find out more” button followed.
Issue
The complainant, who had attempted to take up both offers but had not qualified for a free case of wine, challenged whether the promotions had been administered fairly.
Response
Beer52 Ltd said they had reviewed their referral scheme communications following the complaint and were updating them to ensure the conditions of the offer were communicated more clearly. They believed, however, that the terms of the scheme were widely understood by their members and said they were available on their website.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered that, in the absence of any other relevant information in the ad, recipients of ad (a) were likely to expect that, by sending gifts of wine to friends, they would receive a free case of wine. We considered recipients of ad (b), again in the absence of any other relevant information in the ad, were likely to expect that, when they referred a friend who took out a subscription, the friend would receive 50% off the price of their first case of wine and that the subscriber who referred them would receive a free case of wine.
The “Send invite” button in ad (a) went to a web page where a heading stated “Earn a free case. Share 50% off wine”. Text underneath stated, “Gift a friend a half-price case of 3 bottles of wine. You’ll receive a free case and 40 points when they go on to be a full-paying member […]”. A heading further down stated, “Still got questions?” and was followed by questions and answers which included the following: “How does it work? – Simply invite your friends by sharing your unique link […] We’ll track how many people sign up and reward you with 40 points and a completely free case for every person who goes on to be a full paying member”; and “When will I get my free case? – A free case voucher code will be shown on your account for each successful referral. Your codes are rewarded after your friend’s subscription recurs at full price […]”.The “Find out more” button in ad (b) went to a different web page. Text stated, “Join our beer club and each time you refer a friend, you’ll get a free case of wine […]”. Further down the page, a heading “Still got questions?” was followed by questions and answers. The first stated, “How does it work? – Every time you invite a friend and they stay for their second case, we give you a free reward case of wine (unless you send a Golden Ticket). Once you have completed a certain number of successful referrals, you also receive one of our bonus rewards. So after 3 successful referrals you get a free case of beer from Beer52. After 5 you get £50 in points to spend in the online shop, and so on. Don’t worry, you also still get the free wine each time!” Another stated, “What is a Golden Ticket? – A Golden Ticket is a little something we give you that makes it much easier to invite friends to Wine52. It enables you to send them a FREE case of wine with FREE postage! However, since we are giving a 100% free case to your friend, we can’t also give you a reward case – we just can’t afford it! Go to Invite a friend to see if you have any Golden Tickets”.
Beer52 had referred us to the terms and conditions on their website. They began with a section headed “Refer a friend”. Text stated, “By following your referral link or by entering your referral code at signup, they’ll be able to claim 50% off their first case. If your friend stays with us for a full price case we’ll award you with a free case of wine as our way of saying thank you”.
We acknowledged that it was customary for ads to contain links to more detailed information about offers and for full terms and conditions to appear on a separate web page. Nevertheless, ads still needed to include all significant conditions related to the offer, including how to participate and any restrictions, where the omission of such conditions was likely to mislead, unless they were significantly limited by time and space. We considered that ads (a) and (b), which were emails and therefore not limited in space in the way ads in some other media might be, were not significantly limited by time and space to justify the omission of significant conditions. We considered that the requirement in relation to ad (a) that the recipient of the gift of wine needed to pay to take out a subscription for the sender to qualify for the free case of wine was a significant condition, the omission of which from the ad was likely to mislead consumers.
Similarly, in relation to ad (b), we considered that the requirement that the friend needed to subscribe for a designated period of time so that they received their second case before the sender qualified for a free case of wine was a significant condition of the offer and that the omission of that condition from the ad itself was likely to mislead consumers.
We therefore concluded that because the ads omitted significant conditions regarding how to participate, they were misleading and the promotions therefore breached the Code.
The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 8.2 (Promotional marketing) and 8.17 and 8.17.1 (Significant conditions for promotions).
Action
The promotions must not be run again in the forms complained of. We told Beer52 Ltd to ensure that ads for future promotions did not mislead by omitting significant conditions.
