Aldi CEO Matthew Barnes has hit out at the ASA after it banned a series of Aldi ads for being misleading, following a complaint by Morrisons.
Two TV ads and a press ad, which ran between January and April 2016, compared the price of branded products at the big four supermarkets against Aldi own label products.
The first TV ad said a “big weekly shop” could cost £70 at Aldi but £98 at the supermarkets. The second showed two sets of food products on a kitchen table – the captions read “Big 4 Supermarkets £53.35” and “Aldi £33.04”
The press ad specifically targeted Morrison’s Price Crunch promotion. Showing two small baskets of shopping it read: “Is a price crunch amazing? …No, this is amazing”. The Morrisons basket totalled £18.19 while the Aldi basket cost £11.42.
Morrisons and two members of the public complained to the ASA. They said the ads were misleading because it was not clear they were comparing the price of Aldi’s own-brand products against branded products sold at Morrisons, or that other supermarkets sold cheaper own-brand products.
This morning, a spokesman for Morrisons said: “We believe this advertising was very misleading and we are pleased to see that the Advertising Standards Authority agrees. Customers will understand that it is unfair to compare the price of own-brand products to brands such as Tropicana and then claim that they are cheaper.”
But Aldi CEO Matthew Barnes said Aldi was “extremely disappointed with the ASA’s decision, which is ambiguous and inconsistent. The use of comparative advertising is a well-established principle and is firmly in the interests of consumers and encourages competition between retailers. We will work within this new guidance from the ASA and continue to promote the significant price gap between Aldi¹s quality, award winning products and their higher priced brand equivalents.”
In its ruling, the ASA said Aldi defended the ads, saying it did not believe consumers “would assume that the savings shown were representative of anything other than the specific comparison shown”.
It also said customers would “understand that Morrisons and the other competitor supermarkets stocked own-brand products which met the same need and would likely be cheaper” and that the on-screen text, which read “Other supermarkets may sell ‘own brand’ products at different prices” served to re-emphasise that point.
However the ASA banned the ads, saying they “implied by swapping from their usual big supermarket to shopping at Aldi, consumers could make savings of the levels highlighted in the ads, rather than presenting the comparison as a representation of the savings which could be made by switching from a largely branded shop to shopping in Aldi.”
Aldi was also told when making future “multi-product” price comparisons they must not imply they were “comparing typical weekly shops unless they held evidence that the comparator products (including the mix of branded and own-brand) were a fair and truly representative selection”.
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