FRUSTRATED players of giant crisp brand Walkers’ 2016 promotion Spell & Go, which said there were 20,000 holidays to be won, complained to the Advertising Standards Authority when they found it difficult to find the key letters C, D or K connected to their crisp packs. And when they participated in the scheme’s Random Swaps –a mechanism where they could exchange up to five letters they didn’t need for randomly generated options – C, D, and K were not available for swaps until the last week of the promotion.
The ASA found that it was likely that consumers would have thought all letters would have been available as swaps and that may have influenced decisions to continue to purchase the promotional packs of crisps.
The ASA ruled that the promotion had breached the Committee of Advertising Practice code in one ad because the omission of a significant condition related to Random Swaps was misleading and likely to cause unnecessary disappointment to consumers.
It ordered that the ad must not run again in the form complained of.
