ASA Upholds Complaint About Daily Mail Spoiler Supplement

The Daily Mail has had a complaint against its Monday supplement M upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority. An objection was raised when the complainant bought a copy of the newspaper, having read a front page flash the previous week which described the supplement as “A brilliant new Monday Magazine”. When she discovered that M was an insert consisting of pages 41 to 48 of the newspaper she felt she had been misled.

The ASA felt that despite the fact that the flash was not a promotion, competition or advertisement, it still fell inside the Authority’s remit as it “induced customers to buy the newspaper by promoting a component of the newspaper”. The claim was then upheld despite the argument that in the rapidly changing world of media, “words such as ‘magazine’ should not be too narrowly defined”. In this case, six pages of black and white print were seen to fall short of the expectation the term would provoke in consumers.

The supplement was a spoiler for the launch of The Mirror’s Tuesday free magazine of the same name (see Feature: National Newspaper Supplements). The Mirror’s publication, a glossy, full colour separate, has since won “Supplement of the Year” at the British Press Awards.

In another case, a man featured in a mailing for BSkyB said he was not aware of having given permission for the photograph to be used and that a statement which appeared next to his photograph was untrue. BSkyB were able to produce a release form signed by the candidate and said they would review statements which could be seen as testimonial in their advertising. This complaint was not upheld.

However, in a similar complaint made against a BSkyB national press campaign, a woman whose photo appeared said that the picture had been taken and used without her permission and that the sentiment expressed in a speech bubble on the advert was not hers. This complaint was upheld and the advertisers, who promised to review their procedures, were advised to take more care in obtaining written permission for use of photographs.

Advertising Standards Authority: 020 7580 5555