Advertising watchdog censures Birmingham pubco for misleading promotion

Vintage Inns

The advertising standards watchdog has censured Birmingham-based pubco Mitchells & Butlers after one of its subsidiaries introduced a misleading promotion.

A post on the Vintage Inns’ Facebook page in April this year featured an image of a fillet steak with the text “Fixed price dinner Enjoy 2 courses from £10.95”. The post included a link to a page containing the fixed price menu.

However, the ASA was alerted when it received a complaint that the advert was misleading because the fillet steak was not part of the fixed price menu.

After assessing the complaint, it ruled: “We considered that consumers would understand from the post that the fillet steak would be included in the fixed price promotion; however, it appeared that this was not the case as it did not feature on the fixed price menu linked to in the ad.

“We therefore concluded that the ad was misleading. The ad breached CAP Code rules.”

Mitchells & Butlers did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries, a point which lead to ASA criticism of the company.

It said: “The ASA was concerned by Vintage Inns’ lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule (Unreasonable delay).

“We reminded them of their responsibility to provide a response to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.”

The ASA has ruled that the advert must not appear again in its current form.

“We told Vintage Inns not to feature images of items that were not available on the fixed price menu. We referred the matter to CAP’s compliance team,” it added.

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