Advertising Standards Authority
Had a phone call today from the Advertising Standards Authority which is never a good thing. Apparently they had received a complaint about a page on my website promoting a certain telecom service. To give them their dues they were very polite and seemed very switched on as they asked if the ad on the page was created by me or whether it was created by the company in question. I saw no reason to lie so told them the truth, that the banner on the page was created by the company but the editorial text was written by me.
Anyway it seems that I was advertising a service that was only available to certain people in the country, dependent upon how near they were to the company’s network. However, in the ASA’s view I wasn’t making this clear enough in my editorial. After a quick discussion on how I should change the copy I agreed, they approved it and the case is now closed. All I needed to do was add a sentence stating that if the customer did not live near one of their networks then they would need to pay a higher cost than they would if they did.
Still, the experience made me think that we are being watched and action will be taken if we are deemed to be misrepresenting consumer offers. Big brother is watching!
What I’m listening to right now: Soul II Soul - “Club Classics Vol.1″
Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
May 2nd, 2005 at 9:23 pm
I dont think we have anything like that here in the US. And if we do, they certainly dont enforce it so strictly - if at all.
That would make me completely paranoid!
Glad it was a simple fix! By the way, I find myself scanning your blog to look at the last line of each post to see what you were listening to (LOL) - nice touch! It’s an interesting little twist that you do very consistently. I like that!
~ Lynn Terry