A mailing campaign by Damart has been slammed by the Advertising Standards Authority after the company used a list of fictitious winners to lure people to respond to a prize draw.
The mailing, which was inviting recipients to validate their entry in the draw, listed the recipient’s name alongside nine fictitious names under the heading ‘official extract list of finalists’. It said winners would each receive a cheque for £1,000.
Damart said it had about 2 million customers on its mailing database; 60 per cent of whom were selected to proceed to the final stage and receive the mailing.
Damart said the draw in question occurred every six months and had been sent to over a million customers each time. It said it had not previously received any complaints.
But the ASA decided the mailing inaccurately stated that the names on the list were those of the finalists and consumers were therefore likely to understand the names on the list to be those of genuine finalists.
It concluded that because Damart did not make clear that fictitious names had been used to represent the names of genuine finalists, the ad was misleading and ruled it must not appear again in its current form.
