UIA told to axe personalised mailshot

UIA Insurance has been forced to scrap a direct mail campaign after the ad watchdog ruled its attempt at personalisation – by using a mocked-up handwritten recommendation on the envelope – rendered the campaign misleading.
The financial company, owned by trade union Unite, was promoting a 25% discount for union members. Text on the front of the envelope was presented as handwriting and stated: “This came to me by mistake. Made me want to be a member of your union! No.35.” But one recipient challenged whether the ad – devised by London agency Blac – was misleading because it had been presented in a way that implied a neighbour had made a genuine referral.
In its defence, UIA did not feel that the message from “the neighbour” was presented as a genuine endorsement, but instead was a message that appeared to be handwritten, but was clearly in a printed font from a fictitious neighbour.
UIA claimed the technique had been employed to generate some interest in order to get the recipient’s attention. It also said the mailing contained genuine endorsements from Unison members, which were more likely to encourage members to purchase home insurance than the message on the outer envelope.
However, the Advertising Standards Authority was not convinced, ruling that, as the offer was particularly generous, it would encourage recipients to open the envelope and find out more about the offer or subscribe.
Concluding that the text was misleading and in breach of the code, the regulator banned the mailing from running again in its current form.
Back in 2002, Health Laboratories of North America (HLNA) sparked a furore with a mailing for diet pills that included a handwritten message stating, “try it. It works!”. It has the dubious honour of being the most complained about mailing ever, with 150 women contacting the ASA after being convinced a friend who thought they needed to lose weight had contacted them. The same approach was taken by Briefings Publishing Group, which attached a self-adhesive note with a handwritten statement, “W. Try this, it’s really good!” to an ad for a magazine.

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