Sic ASA Parrot 2

More Advertising Standards Authority adjudications from the end of 2009.

Britvic, who make Tango orange drink, had "no intention to imply oral sex with a bull and they were concerned about any distress caused to those who had interpreted the ad in that way. They had carried out qualitative research groups with 17-20-year-old men before producing the campaign, and none of the respondents had interpreted the ad's headline as referring to oral sex with a bull." In what context would 17-20 year old men admit thinking of oral sex with a bull? The advert said: "Too much Tango made me suck a bull's udder." Another ad, "too much tango made me shave my nan", had "definitely no intention to imply the shaving of vaginal hair".

Press TV, the Iranian government's English-language satellite news channel is truthful! Well, truth is relative. The ASA said, "We considered that '24/7 TRUTH' would be seen as the station's opinion of the information it provided rather than an objective claim." As long as they "provided the full story as they saw it" there is no need to prove the reporting actually was true. This will surely be a comfort to TV news organisations everywhere.

If a company's response to a complaint starts like the following, you can probably guess the outcome:

The Watermark Club Ltd (the Watermark Club) said the word "holiday" originated from Holy day, used to describe a day of festivity or recreation where no work was done. They defined other words, for example "second home", "residential property" and "holiday lodge". They said a "second home" plainly meant a place where one did not live as ones permanent home no more or less and underlined that in all probability if you were away from your primary home you would be on a break or on holiday.

A complaint was upheld against holiday home property company Watermark Club, which was told that it had to make it clear you couldn't live in your new waterside home between "January 6 and February 5 of each year", amongst other restrictions.

liverock.org.uk advertised a fake Dionne Warwick concert on Magic FM. One punter "paid £296.00 for four tickets to the concert and subsequently found out that Dionne Warwick was not performing".

British Airways advertised the delights of Guangzhou (Canton), despite not actually flying to Canton - they suggest you can fly to Hong Kong or Shanghai and go from there. Complaint upheld.

British Gas will phone ahead to warn you before they come around. Except if they're coming to read your meter.

Car dealer Stoneacre Motor Group gets in trouble for advertising a scrappage scheme but not scrapping the cars.

Daily Mail misleading over a promotion for "free bulbs".

It's ok for Peta to say that eating meat gives you man-boobs.

Virgin Media in trouble for being rude to ginger-haired people!

The same presenter appeared on 2 different TV shopping channels at the same time, but this was found "unlikely to materially mislead viewers".

Best product idea of the bunch: Extend-A-Room offer to make your house bigger by constructing a new room in just 1-2 days (basically, it's a conservatory). Sadly, it seems they're not quite that fast.

With any recession come recruitment scams, such as the unimaginatively named JK Data and DH Data, and escort agency First4Companions. Meanwhile recruitment firm Pro-Tax was caught exaggerating its influence. And it strayed over into training: Redwood Futures were misleading wannabe accountants and The Ensign Group taxi drivers. Belmont Sporting's gambling system isn't any use either.

Martini won't make you beautiful! An event at a Pitcher and Piano bar promised "Stay beautiful with Martini". According to the ASA code, alcohol does not enhance attractiveness.

Digital Satellite Warranty Cover Ltd seem to have some method of getting hold of Sky customers' addresses and sending them direct mail. (Admittedly they could find out simply by looking at someone's house that they have Sky.)

Dating site eHarmony was criticised for claiming "2% of American couples who had married in 2007 were likely to have met through eHarmony" - their evidence doesn't show that - and because 20% of applicants got no matches at all.

Mobile Phone Xchange Ltd will exchange many mobile phones for cash! But not all.

Products and services that don't work as claimed: Easylife Pelvic Back Pain Belt; Dore program for treating dyslexia and Asperger's syndrome; Estee Lauder's "wrinkle-fighter" Perfectionist CP+ Wrinkle Lifting Serum; killyourstutter.com; Lloyds Pharmacy hay fever reliever; Advanced Hair Studio; Gymform Vibro Max; Larsen Health Care's chiropractic treatment for IBS, colds and asthma; Pain Ease electric patch; jennysweighlosssuccess.com; Omega XL artery cleaner; and Direct Beauty Products' silk anti-aging pillowcases. In all these cases, advertisers failed to produce evidence of claims (although the Estee Lauder stuff does work as well as any cheap moisturiser).

Sic ASA Parrot

The first edition of what will hopefully be a regular roundup of adjudications by the Advertising Standards Authority, the British ad industry watchdog.

Danone not so good for you? The yogurt manufacturer failed to show Actimel is "scientifically proven to help support your kids' defences". Referenced studies were on hospitalised Indian kids or children under 3 years, neither of which featured in the TV ad.

Peta falsely imply that eating meat causes swine flu. Rearing pigs might get you, but fortunately most bacon-eaters never see a real live oinker.

Male drivers ARE dangerous. A government campaign warned women not to get into a car with a man if she didn't trust his driving. A viewer felt this was offensive to male drivers, not all of whom are crazed careless killers on wheels (allegedly). The ASA felt the ad "highlighted the statistical risks to encourage prudent behaviour" - who could ask for anything more?

Abtronic? Abysmal. Sellers of an electronic muscle-stimulation belt were picked up by ASA monitors. Oh dear: it's not the easy path to a sculpted six-pack, no substitute for going to the gym, and the ASA doubted claims that it was relaxing, suggesting there's no pain no gain: "We acknowledged that the 'relaxation' setting on the Abtronic X2 was likely to feel relatively comfortable, but considered that to achieve the claimed muscle-toning, the Abtronic X2 would need to be set to the exercise programme, which was likely to cause some pain or discomfort." Ouch!

We Buy Any Car vindicated. They'll buy any car, even a limo, but not your pick-up. Because it's not a car. Sorry, complainer!

Tesco and Asda are at war. The casus belli: who has the cheaper prices. Asda tries to prove it's better with an independent price comparison website checking a wide selection of products. Tesco has a different plan. They select random people's shopping baskets (I assume they store details of everything each person buys, rather than grabbing a random shopper as he heads for the tills with two fillet steaks, a bottle of Cava, and a twelve-pack of condoms), and they check the price of this randomly selected basket against what Asda would sell it for. Someone complained, objecting that this is biased as it doesn't take account of the fact that 95% of Tesco products could be overpriced, but if people walk in the door, see the prices, refuse to buy the bad-value stuff and just take the buy-one-get-one-free spinach bags and the half-price wine from a country you've never heard of, then Tesco will look really cheap (assuming ASDA doesn't have deals on spinach and Bolivian Merlot). The response: "Tesco said it was generally accepted that advertising sought to present companies in the most favourable light. Price comparison ads were, by their very nature, highly biased in favour of the advertiser." The ASA said: victory to Tesco. Also cheaper than Boots, by slightly better reasoning.

Park's miracle mattress won't help you concentrate or relieve your pain.

Coke in trouble over Vitaminwater. Viewers may confuse Jean-Claude van Damme and Brussels sprouts, and that's just the beginning of their problems, as the ASA dispute their health benefits and suggest 4.6g sugar/100ml is a lot of calories for a drink that claims to be water.

Something about frying-related franchises. Purifry Ltd challenge FiltaFry's uniqueness. Purifry offers franchised deep-fat fryer care, cleaning, and oil disposal. FiltaFry do much the same but their website has exciting videos! There are business opportunities here! It's war of the fryers! This could get messy!

talkSPORT offer pre-pay Maestro cards? And don't tell you that there's a fee for topping them up? Naughty.

Penis pump maker deflated.

Chinese buffet ok. Anyone can call themselves "world famous" even if nobody's heard of you - it's a meaningless subjective phrase not a statement of fact.

Mercedes not so environmentally sound.

Leona Lewis in trouble: apparently if you call something your "new album" it shouldn't just be a bunch of old tracks in a new cover.

Guthy-Renker beauty products - this web page offers ASA highlights, but it seems that most of their adjudications are against utility companies, made-up religions, and French cosmetics with dubious scientific claims.

Universal Church of the Kingdom of God's blessed oil probably won't save your life, even with the disclaimer "The UCKG does not claim to heal people but believes that God can through the power of faith."

The Queen is in trouble: truly the ASA fears nobody. The Duchy of Lancaster making unjustified claims in an attempt to build new houses in the ancient village of Cloughton.