Motoring

The Anthony Conaghan Cars website featured a banner advertisement on the homepage which read:

“Anthony Conaghan

Ireland’s Favourite Car Retailer”

The complainant said that the advertisers were self-proclaimed as ‘Ireland’s favourite car retailer’ and had not won any awards. They felt that by using this claim the advertisers were being disingenuous to potential customers in order to generate sales.

The advertisers said that they had won three national awards from Cars Ireland, a classified advertisement website. They said that they had over 240 5-star reviews and they believed that there was no other car dealer in the country with such a level of reviews. They provided a copy of the review section from their Facebook page, which they said was currently the strongest review mechanism in Ireland.

They further said that they stand by their claim of ‘Ireland’s favourite car retailer’ as nobody was as passionate about the job as they were.


Further Information:
The Executive noted that the three award categories in the Cars Ireland Dealership Awards were ‘Best Presented’, ‘Best Online Marketing’ and ‘Best Use of Social Media’.

Complaint Upheld.

The Complaints Committee considered the detail of the complaint and the advertisers’ response. The Committee noted that substantiation that had been submitted for the claim “Ireland’s Favourite Car Retailer” had related to awards for “online marketing and innovative social media in car sales” and social media reviews. They did not consider that the material submitted had substantiated the advertising claim “Ireland’s Favourite Car Retailer”.

In the absence of evidence for the claim ‘Ireland’s Favourite Car Retailer’ through a nationally representative survey, the Complaints Committee considered the advertisement was in breach of sections 4.1, 4.4, 4.9, 4.10 and 4.33.


ACTION REQUIRED:
The advertisement must not reappear in its current form.