Note: This advice is given by the CAP Executive about non-broadcast advertising. It does not constitute legal advice. It does not bind CAP, CAP advisory panels or the Advertising Standards Authority.
These are in effect “top-equal” or “joint-best” claims and include claims such as “You won’t find the same deal for less” (Progressive Financial Services Ltd, 9 February 2005), “No one beats our prices”, “You can’t buy cheaper”, “no other car has a better safety record”, “no other nappy keeps baby drier”, “You can’t get better service”, “no one delivers quicker” etc. Top-parity claims are used if outright superiority is unobtainable or difficult or impossible to prove. For example, if a product has the same amount of active ingredient and no extra benefit, a top-parity claim along the lines of “nothing is proven to work better than X” is likely to be acceptable. Similarly, if a product or service could be judged on several key criteria and no one product has an advantage on all, several marketers might be able to claim top parity.
Generally, top-parity claims are safe if the marketer’s product or service is demonstrably as good as that of the main competitors. In 2001, however, the ASA upheld a complaint that Persil Non-bio offered “unbeatable cleaning” because the tests gave the advertised product an unfair advantage and even the top-parity claim was unproven (Lever Faberge Ltd, 4 September 2002). On other occasions, such as in highly competitive markets and for closely matched products, the ASA has received good evidence from one party and equally compelling evidence, showing a different result, from another. In those circumstances, the ASA has sometimes ruled that neither party should go beyond a top-parity claim. Marketers might be interested to learn that, in early 2005, the General Media Panel considered whether a benefit that was demonstrable but imperceptible to consumers justified a superiority claim. The Panel believed that, if the benefit was not meaningful to the consumer, marketers should limit themselves to top parity.
Not all top-parity claims are objective: if the basis of the claim is not obvious or if the context of the claim makes it seem subjective, it is unlikely that marketers would need to provide evidence to support them. In 2000, the ASA allowed the claims “Nobody Does News Better” and “the top stories” because they were adjudged to be subjective (ITV, October 2000).
Last modified : 30 July 2010