Samsung Told To Remove Misleading Online And TV Ads

The Advertising Standard Agency (ASA) has dropped the hammer on South Korean conglomerate Samsung, asking them to remove a couple of its online and television adverts, terming them to be “misleading”. This bit of information was made available in an adjudication which was already published, where the ASA claimed that it has been on the receiving end of complaints concerning the ads that touted customers will be able to pick up a free Samsung Galaxy Tab or money off the firm’s products whenever they decide to make that upgrade to high-end Samsung models.

The ASA is pretty sure that this claim is not true, simply because there were very few models of phone which were eligible for the offer, and this fact was made particularly (and painfully) clear in the small print itself. In the TV ad, it mentioned, “Trade up now to a Galaxy Note II and you could get a free Tab 2 or money off selected Samsung products.”, where at the end of the ad, there was some text that appeared on-screen which said: “T&Cs apply, selected smartphones, 16+.” As there are 30 different phones which qualified for the discount offer, a free Galaxy Tab 2 offer was “conditional” on three models – if you decided to hand over your iPhone 4, iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy S2. The ASA mentioned, “We considered the condition that three smartphones could be traded in for consumers to receive the free Galaxy Tab 2 was significant and therefore needed to be clearly stated in the ad. We therefore concluded the ad was misleading.” Do you agree?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Samsung