ASA clears Tesco Mobile of airing ‘misleading’ Ronnie Corbett ad
The Advertising Standards Authority has dismissed a complaint made against a Tesco Mobile TV ad alleging that its claim that ‘You can get all the latest phones’, was misleading.
The ad in question depicted two robe wearing men in a steam room discussing Tesco Mobile, before the camera panned back to show Ronnie Corbett saying: “You see the thing is you can get all the latest phones and the best customer service of any network."
On-screen text at the end of the ad stated, "There's nothing funny about Tesco Mobile".
In its adjudication the ASA observed that it believed the claim ‘was delivered in a casual manner and would not be taken literally by viewers’.
Its assessment read: “We noted that Tesco stocked the ten most popular phones and then a selection of other phones on the market, but did not stock every phone available in the UK. We noted the market data they supplied and that the top ten phones at any one time accounted for a high percentage of total market.
“Because we considered that the claim would be understood as referring to the most popular phones, rather than every single model, and the evidence from Tesco confirmed that they stocked phones that the majority of consumers would be interested in, we concluded that the ad was not in breach of the Code.”