Sky shot down for whacking Virgin

A Sky direct mail campaign has been grounded by the ad watchdog after it ruled the missive misleadingly belittled Virgin’s services and exaggerated the negative effects of using its broadband package.
Using a mocked up phone conversation between a customer and Virgin’s call centre, the mailing opened with the message: “Let’s give Virgin Media a call and see what happens.”
Inside, a booklet opened with the question: “So this super-duper fast broadband I’ve got is always going to stay that way, right?”
The response, supposedly from a Virgin customer services agent stated: “Well that depends. We do have a traffic management policy.” Text on the next page of the stated: “At Sky, when we say our broadband usage is unlimited, that’s exactly what we mean … So whether you’re into The Smiths back catalogue, Spiderman movies or your friend’s holiday snapshots – you can download whatever you want without worrying about usage limits. Ever.”
The conversation then turned to Virgin’s lack of HD channels, and 3D TV service, triggering a complaint by Virgin Media to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The company challenged the mailing on five issues, including, it claimed, the misleading exaggerations on its broadband, HD and 3D TV services, but mainly how it is was “denigrating to the Virgin Media brand by presenting an overly negative portrayal of the service its customers received”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sky could not see anything wrong with the mailshot, saying it simply pointed out the objective competitive advantages of its service compared to Virgin Media’s. It said the ad did not state or imply that Virgin Media’s service was bad or unsatisfactory, nor that Virgin Media adopted any unfair, dishonest or duplicitous practices.
However, the ASA was not convinced, despite rejecting Virgin Media’s complaints about Sky’s HD and 3D TV claims.
Ruling the ad must not appear again in its current form, it warned Sky not to misleadingly exaggerate the effect of competitors’ services in future and not to denigrate Virgin Media’s brand.
The ruling is the latest in one of the longest-running tit-for-tat advertising battles of all time, with hardly a week going by without Sky and Virgin falling foul of the advertising code. Sky is understood to have an entire legal team whose sole job is to scrutinise Virgin Media’s marketing activity for potential breaches of the ad code.

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