BT has won the latest victory in the long-running battle of the broadband providers after a single complaint filed at the ad watchdog has forced Sky to scrap a new spot featuring the Minions for “misleading” customers.
The ad, which first aired in October last year, advertised Sky’s “Wall to Wall Wi-Fi Guarantee” and featured the Minions in numerous rooms of a four-storey house with poor Wi-Fi.
Yet once they had switched on Sky broadband, the connection was instantly much faster. The ad concluded with all the Minions – best known for the movie Despicable Me – using devices online simultaneously in each room of the house. The voice-over stated: “That’s Wi-Fi from loft to lair at no extra cost from Sky broadband,” and the ad ended with on-screen text stating “Sky broadband Wi-Fi from loft to lair or money back”.
In text at the foot of the screen there was a statement that read: “Min. 3Mb/s in up to 12 rooms, or one month’s Broadband subscription back” but it was a “blink and you’ll miss it” moment.
And BT, which believed that Sky’s advertised broadband offering did not include any extenders or boosters, challenged the Advertising Standards Authority whether the ad misleadingly implied that customers would receive seamless Wi-Fi in every room of a house, including hard-to-reach places with coverage issues.
It is ruling, the ASA said the key focus of the ad was the messaging relating to Sky’s Wi-Fi coverage throughout the home with the claim “Don’t settle for patchy Wi-Fi”, and the depiction of the Minions restoring the Wi-Fi connection to devices in each room of the house with the new Sky router.
However, it ruled that the statements informing viewers of the money-back guarantee were insufficient in counteracting the overall impression that Sky’s broadband service could improve patchy Wi-Fi.
Because it considered that the ad, as it was likely to be understood by viewers, suggested that Sky’s fibre broadband provided Wi-Fi coverage throughout a home and could significantly improve patchy Wi-Fi, it concluded that the ad exaggerated the performance of the product and therefore that it was likely to mislead.
Banning the ad from running again its current form, the ASA warned Sky about its future advertising.
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