After more than a year of legal wrangling, the Advertising Standards Authority Final Appeals Committee found that adverts for Alberto-Culver's TRESemme hair products were not misleading, ordering Procter & Gamble to pay half of Alberto-Culver's legal costs.
Procter & Gamble, which produces Clairol, Body on Tap, Head and Shoulders and Herbal Essence shampoos, lodged a complaint in October last year, according to the judgment, against Alberto-Culver's TRESemme advertising in print and on TV, claiming the adverts were misleading as they implied a substantial number of professional hair stylists were using the product.
Procter & Gamble had proof that stylist “Leo”, quoted in the advertising — who just happens to be a well-known stylist in England — actually uses and sells L'Oreal products from his salon, not TRESemme products.
The ASA appeals committee disagreed with two previous rulings by the ASA in Procter & Gamble's favour, ruling that the advertising claimed to offer products of professional or salon quality, at an affordable price, rather than claiming it was being used by a substantial number of professional stylists, as Procter & Gamble had contended.
In its judgment the ASA appeals committee said: “The claim that TRESemme hair products are ‘salon quality' is true and accurate; TRESemme was for an initial 16-year period historically only distributed by (Alberto-Culver) and/or its then distributor, Divine Sales Ltd, to salons and was hence only available to the public from salons.”
The committee said that, internationally, TRESemme products were distributed only to salons for 20 years, until Alberto-Culver changed its marketing strategy.
TRESemme was also the headline sponsor for Project Runway, a US reality TV show which was broadcast in SA.
The panel considered thousands of pages of submissions including a study by market research company Synovate which showed that “only 8% of professional hair stylists used the product on themselves and 7% on their customers”.
Source: Business Day
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