The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a Lidl regional press advert in Scotland, due to the “misleading” nature of its discount claims.
Published in March earlier this year, the ad featured in The Daily Record Great Scot newspaper compared the prices of Lidl’s products to Tesco’s.
The phrases included were “Save over 35% at Lidl” and “Lidl £22.92 Tesco £36.39 … Great Scot! At Lidl you can save a lot.”
The German discount grocer’s rival Aldi challenged whether these discount statements were general savings claims and if they could be substantiated.
Lidl responded by stating that the ads were “specific comparisons of the products depicted” and that it had listed in detail the verification information, with products from Tesco.
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“They believed it was entirely clear that the savings claims in the ads only related to the products shown and should not be extrapolated to all products sold by Lidl and Tesco,” the ASA said.
“Lidl emphasised that it was not their intention to make a general savings claim against Tesco within this specific copy.”
The discounter also pointed out that the link to the verification page in the article “repeated the explanation of the basis of the comparison”.
Despite Lidl’s pleas, the ASA ruled that consumers in Scotland would believe that the savings claims referred to differences offered by the two supermarkets “more widely”.
The ASA added: “We did not consider that the ads made sufficiently clear that the 30%/35% savings related only to the specific selection of products shown.”
“Because we had not seen evidence that this general level of savings could ordinarily be achieved, we considered the ads were likely to mislead.”
The self-regulatory authority ordered Lidl to take down the advertisement and ensure the supermarket’s future discount claims were limited to specific comparisons.
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