Ad description
A press ad and a leaflet for a Lettings agent:
a. The press ad stated "NOW LET. IMS LETTINGS Derby's No.1 Award Winning Agent". The ad also featured an image of an award which contained the text "LETTINGS AGENCY of the YEAR 2010 THE SUNDAY TIMES THE TIMES FINALIST".
b. The leaflet featured an image of a 'To Let' sign which included the text "Derby's No.1 Award Winning Agent". The sign also included a small image of an award".
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claim "Derby's No.1 Award Winning Agent" in ads (a) and (b) was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
IMS Group Ltd (IMS) said they were recognised as Derby's No.1 Letting Agent and had been for many years. They stated that they were dominant in the Derby marketplace in every area of business. They said they were able to ascertain this by conducting mystery shops on competitors, independent board surveys and e-mails from competitors to prospective landlords confirming the number of lets per month for all major competitors. They said they had let three times the number of their nearest competitor. They stated that they had more branches, more staff, more cars, more 'To Let' and 'Let By' boards and had more properties on Zoopla, rightmove and on the individual letting agency websites. They did not provide documentary evidence to support these statements.
They provided evidence to demonstrate that they had won a property services directory website award 2012 and were shortlisted for the "Best Medium Lettings Agency Award" in association with The Times. They said they would also remove the claim "Derby's No.1 Letting Agent" from their website and letterheads.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA welcomed the changes IMS said it would make to its website and letterheads. We considered the claim "Derby's No.1 Award Winning Agent" would either be understood to mean that IMS had won the largest number of awards (compared to other agents in Derby) or as a claim that the agency had won at least one award and also had let the most number of properties (compared to other agents in Derby) over a reasonable period of time. Because of the ambiguous way in which the claim was presented we therefore considered that it had the potential to mislead.
We noted IMS had won a website award in 2012 and had been shortlisted for another award in 2010. However, we noted evidence was not supplied to demonstrate that it had won more awards than any other agent in Derby. IMS believed the "No.1" element of the claim could be supported by having more company vehicles, staff and branches. However, we did not consider that was indicative of how many properties they let in comparison to their competitors. Whilst IMS believed they had the larger number of properties to let listed online, we considered that this did not demonstrate how many properties both IMS and their competitors had successfully let.
We considered as not every estate agent was guaranteed to put a board outside a property and as boards could be unscrupulously placed by agents, counting Let Board presence was not an adequate method of substantiating a claim about market leadership. We understood that IMS had conducted mystery shopping on competitors. However, we did not consider that this method of comparison to be an independent and accurate way of recording the exact number of properties let by their competitors over a reasonable period of time. We noted IMS maintained that they had let more houses each month than any other agent in Derbyshire. However, because we had not seen adequate documentary evidence to show that that was the case, we concluded that the ad was misleading.
We therefore concluded that the claim "Derby's No.1 Award Winning Letting Agent" had not been substantiated and the ad was misleading.
Ads (a) and (b) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules
3.1
3.1
Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
3.3
3.3
Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
(Misleading advertising),
3.7
3.7
Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.
(Substantiation) and
3.33
3.33
Marketing communications that include a comparison with an identifiable competitor must not mislead, or be likely to mislead, the consumer about either the advertised product or the competing product.
(Comparisons with identifiable competitors).
Action
The ads should not appear again in their current form. We told IMS not to state or imply that they were the number one letting agent in Derby if they did not have adequate comparative evidence to support it.
