Mercedes-Benz Has Their E-Class Ad Banned As It ‘Misleads The Public’
Miscellaneous | Dean | October 2, 2009 at 22:35
Mercedes-Benz has been caught misleading the public with one of their E-Class adverts. The German automaker claimed that the emissions on the new E-Class were down to about 139g/km of CO2, where they followed with the catch phrase of, “It’s a pleasure, but not a guilty one”.
After complaint, or two, the ASA investigated this matter and found that only two out of a 24 possible Mercedes-Benz E-Class models actually correspond with the emission figures announced.
Scarily enough, the report said that some of the figures accumulated were actually some of the highest in the category.
Over the past few years the British ASA has been banning ads similar to this as the advertisers have been misleading the public. Of course, Mercedes-Benz are not the only automaker to be culprits in this matter, as this year alone has seen the ASA ban marketing proposals from both VW and Lexus.
The Mercedes-Benz ad claimed that “CO2 emissions for the range are down to 139g/km*, which means it’s better for the environment. It also means you pay less tax,”
The image did however have the E250 CDI model on show, and this variant does actually have CO2 emissions of 139g/km, however, the asterisk denoted that the range varied from 139 to 253g/km.
Does this mean that Mercedes-Benz are actually lying, or is this just simple marketing? To be fairly honest it does feel as if the company did say that it varies between two reasonable amounts, where they did picture the model with the lowest emissions. This would be totally different if it was the E 63 AMG followed by the catch phrase of “139g/km”.
Are advertising companies becoming too strict, or are people just forgetting to read the finer details?
Tags: asa, E-Class, Mercedes-Benz
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I don’t see any harm in this. I think the action was taken against them so that this Ad would be spoken about by even more people around the world. I don’t think this is a legitimate action pursued against Merc.
Could be that. Any publicity is good publicity. The fact that they are talking about the emissions, and that’s what this is all about just creates more awareness.