THE ACCC has found Coca-Cola was misleading in a “myth busting” ad about the soft drink.
Coca-Cola will have to publish corrective advertising after the competition watchdog found the company made “totally unacceptable” claims that its drink did not rot teeth or lead to weight gain.
The full-page ad featured actress Kerry Armstrong extolling the virtues of Coca-Cola and caused an outcry from parents and health groups when it was published in newspapers late last year.
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This protest led to complaints to the industry-run Advertising Standards Bureau. The Bureau ruled in November that the advertisement was “truthful and honest” – a decision called a failure by a parents’ group.
Today the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took a very different view.
It ordered Coca-Cola South Pacific to publish corrections in seven newspapers and on the internet.
“After seeing the Myth Busting campaign, the ACCC was immediately concerned about the misleading messages it was likely to send to consumers and in particular, to mothers who are often the decision makers about family nutrition,” the ACCC said.
“Coke’s messages were totally unacceptable, creating an impression which is likely to mislead that Coca-Cola cannot contribute to weight gain, obesity and tooth decay.
“They also had the potential to mislead parents about the potential consequences of consuming Coca-Cola.”
“It’s a stricter test”
The chief executive of the Advertising Standards Bureau Fiona Jolly said the ACCC decision looked at actual legislation, which its board did not use.
“Our codes are based on community standards and have different requirements to the ACCC legislation,” she told news.com.au.
“(The ACCC) looks at whether ads are likely to be misleading. So it’s a stricter test.
“There were a couple of areas where the board had a little bit of concern, particularly with the myth ‘rots your teeth’, but considered that because it did have specific information about dental hygiene that it was not misleading.
“Our board aren’t legal experts, they’re members of the community who have to look at the ad and the code and say ‘do we think the community would find this ad actually misleading.
“At the time we looked at that ad, the board’s decision that overall it wasn’t.”
Ms Jolly said the board would use the ACCC’s decision to inform future rulings on complaints.
“Red faces”
Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said Coca-Cola could consider itself fortunate that the matter was dealty with quicky as the ACCC will have greater powers to impose heavy fines for misleading ads from next year.
“Coke have been left with faces as red as their familiar cans from this but are lucky they got busted before the new powers come in,” he said.
“And it has really underlined the shortcomings of the Advertising Standards Bureau as they found there was nothing wrong with these ads.
“The claims were so ludicrous you wonder how they could be doing these ads with a straight face.”
The manager of lobby group The Parents Jury, Justine Hodge, said she was delighted with the ACCC’s decision.
“The original ad was clearly misleading. It conveyed an image of Coke not being an unhealthy product. We felt that Australian parents were being misled into think that Coke doesn’t make you fat, doesn’t rot your teeth and doesn’t contain large amounts of caffeine. It does and now these statements all found to be untrue.”
Ms Hodge said she was disappointed that actress Kerry Armstrong had allowed herself to front the advertisement.
Ms Hodge said self-regulation had failed and that the Advertising Standards Bureau wasn’t doing its job.
“The decision today shows that the regulations that are currently in place don’t hold up,” Ms Hodge said.
“Self-regulation has failed, it doesn’t work.”
She called on the Federal Government to take over the regulation of the advertising industry.
Other companies in trouble
Coca-Cola is not the first company to have to backtrack after making a misleading claim in an ad.
Nudie Juice was last year ordered to publish corrective ads over claims that its Rosie Ruby drink consisted of 100 per cent cranberry cloudy juice and the Rosie Blue drink was solely cranberry and blueberry juice.
However, the drinks in fact contained only about 20 per cent of those juices with the lion’s share predominantly made up of reconstituted apple juice.
General Motors Holden was taken to the Federal Court over ads that said its Saabs vehicles were green and carbon neutral.
GM Holden made representations that the carbon emissions from any Saab vehicle would be neutral over the life of the vehicle and would it plant 17 native trees to offset the carbon-dioxide emissions for the life of the car.
But the claims were found to be misleading because emissions wouldn’t be neutral over the car’s lifetime and 17 trees would only offset the car’s operation for one year.
Holden had to retrain its marketing staff and has promised to plant 12,500 native trees.
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