Another MTN advertising oversight
Vodacom lodged a complaint about MTN with the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) regarding one of their recent email promotions.
Vodacom objected to a promotional email that MTN sent to business customers containing an unfounded claim which had been ruled against by the ASA.
Vodacom, though it’s advertising agency FCB, previously lodged a successful complaint with the ASA about its Push-to-Talk service. While MTN claimed that it launched ‘another first in South Africa’, Vodacom pointed out that they launched this service to the business market on 15 December 2005 while MTN only launched its service in May this year.
The ASA upheld the Vodacom complaint and ordered MTN to immediately withdraw their advertising pertaining to these claims and ordered them to not use this campaign again in future.
MTN however sent out email promotions to business customers on the 9th of July 2007 and the 1st of August 2007 where this offending claim appears in these email advertisements.
MTN said that the fact that the email promotion contained the offending claim was due to an innocent oversight.
MTN submitted that its commercial legal adviser sent out a general communication to inform all relevant parties of the ASA ruling on 21 and 22 June 2007. “The party responsible for the breach emails advised that they were not aware of this instruction. They have again been instructed to amend the advertising,” the ASA website states.
The ASA said that it is satisfied that MTN did not flagrantly disregard the previous ruling and does not deem it appropriate to impose sanctions at this time. MTN was however cautioned that this ruling may be taken into consideration should further breaches come to light.
Not the first time
This is however not the first time where an oversight has landed MTN in hot water. In a recent promotional website campaign, MTN promised consumers 100 free SMSs.
This turned out to be an outdated campaign, and MTN conceded that the advertising is not accurate and that the offer was only valid until February 2006. MTN claimed that “due to changes in staff, the changes had not been checked and updated.”
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