Subscription ads for Scottish broadsheet The Herald banned by ASA over promotional gift row
Scottish broadsheet newspaper The Herald has been hit with a ban from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after an ad for the paper’s subscription package implied that promotional gifts given to new customers, including an Amazon Kindle e-reader, were free.
Ads for The Herald's subscription packages have been banned by the ASA.
The ad stated that subscribers who signed up for a ‘New Year special offer’ could receive a new Kindle or a £75 gift card for John Lewis.
However, since the paper also offered a cheaper subscription package which did not come with the promotional gifts, the ASA ruled that the gifts should not have been advertised as ‘free’.
Newsquest, which owns The Herald, said that its subscription offers were “straightforward” and that the promotional gifts were associated with a subscription package which cost the same as the usual cover price of the paper, and that its other subscription offer came with a discount on the cover price but no promotional gift.
The ASA judged the wording of the ad, and the use of the phrase ‘free’ to be misleading and in breach of the Code. The watchdog said: “Because they would be able to obtain the same subscription at a lower price than if they had taken advantage of the “New Year Special Offer”, we considered that the additional promotional items – the Kindle e-reader of the gift card – that were included as part of the promotion were not genuinely free.”
Newsquest has been told by the ASA to ensure that future ads “did not misleadingly claim that those items were free, if consumers were able to obtain an equivalent subscription without those promotional items at a lower price.”
The Herald has a print circulation of 28,900, and boasts a readership of 100,000 across Scotland.
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