Ad description
An ad, seen on YouTube, for the online beauty retailer www.feelunique.com featured a video showing various products and beauty brands. Text underneath the video stated "feelunique.com brings you outstanding value beauty, grooming and health products straight to your door for free! Choose from a diverse selection of over 17,500 products from the UK's favourite online beauty store!".
Issue
Beautybay.com Ltd challenged whether the claim "the UK's favourite online beauty store" could be substantiated.
Response
feelunique.com submitted data relating to website visits for the period March to August 2012 and a report from a market research organisation. They said these documents demonstrated that their website was the most popular, and that they had the highest sales figure for the last financial year, when compared with their competitors. They said the claim was a comparison with other UK online-only beauty retailers and did not include multichannel retailers, and that this was made clear in the claim "the UK's favourite online beauty store".
Assessment
Upheld
The website data demonstrated that www.feelunique.com had received more visits for most months between March and August 2012 when compared with some other online beauty retailers. However, the ASA considered that claims that related to the popularity of the website needed to be supported by data that related to unique visitors, rather than visits. We also considered that, in the context of the ad which stated "Choose from a diverse selection of over 17,500 products", readers would understand the claim "the UK's favourite online beauty store" to mean that feelunique.com sold more products than any other online UK beauty store. The market research report demonstrated that for 2010 and 2011 feelunique.com had the highest sales figure, when compared with beauty retailers that traded exclusively online. However, we considered readers would understand the comparison to be with all UK beauty stores available online, including those who also traded via other channels. Because we had not received evidence that demonstrated that was the case we considered that the claim had not been substantiated and concluded that it was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so. (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), 3.9 (Qualification) 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. and 3.35 3.35 They must objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature of those products, which may include price. (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told feelunique.com not to make the claim "UK's favourite online beauty store" unless it could be substantiated with comparative sales data that related to all beauty stores that traded online.
