Interesting Advertising Standards ruling on Naim Powerline

[PhilP]

The UK Advertising Standards Authority has made an interesting ruling on Naim's adverts for its Powerline mains cable: 

https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudicat...fE6RShzUog

Probably the most interesting aspect of this is that even a well-established and respected company like Naim could not produce convincing evidence that "mains power had a negative and perceptible influence on audio equipment or that their products could control such an influence."

Naim's claims are pretty mild compared to those of many other manufacturers and I don't know why they were singled out.  I actually could hear a benefit when I tried a Powerline in my system...

[krass]

the ASA ruling seems based on legality, they dont attempt to make a judgement themselves on whether the product could have benefit (that's not their job, they only have to assess the complaint and the counter-evidence submitted by the advertiser).

They did recognise the content of the article, but ultimately reject it as 'evidence':
a) ....we did not consider a review in a magazine to be adequate evidence to substantiate the claim in the ad
b)....concluded that the claim had not been substantiated

The problem is that the benefit is quite subjective, so it will always be difficult to provide 'evidence'.

My reading of the article is that the ASA are bound to accept the complaint because Naim didn't offer sufficient, substantiated evidence to the contrary (and maybe they should not have primarily relied on a 3rd party magazine). The Naim test results obviously did not demonstrate "control of corrupting influence of mains power.."

Difficult. I completely agree with your comment "interesting that even a well-established and respected company like Naim could not produce convincing evidence".

I dont think they were singled out by the ASA; but interesting that there was only 1 complainant ! Obviously a Naim-hater....

[Confused]

I sometimes wonder what would happen if the ASA stumbled across some of the Phantom advertising. Could be fun.

[Rufus McDufus]

They may do, if someone complains.