Business

The complainant stated that they had heard the advertisement on radio, however, beyond the featured claim and services advertised, they did not provide further details on which specific communication they heard. Four communications formed part of this campaign, transcripts of which are given below. Each communication promoted the various products and services offered by Squareup International Limited.

15 Second Advertisement:
[Voiceover] Square has everything your business needs: Payments, inventory, ordering, invoicing…
[Customer voice]: “Hey, a pint and packet of cheese ‘n’ onion please?”
[Voiceover] Explaining you’re just a barber’s, and not a pub? You’re on your own there. Square: Everything your business needs – Almost.

30 Second Advertisement:
[Voiceover] You know when a customer says ‘hello’, and you can’t remember if it’s Pat, Pat’s brother, Pat’s cousin, or Pat’s… butcher? And they’re looking at you, waiting to pay, and waiting for you to say their name. After all that hard work, setting up your own business, to be standing here wishing the ground would swallow you up…

Well, Square can’t help you there. But we can help with taking payments, checking your inventory, invoicing and the rest. Square: Everything your business needs – Almost.

Sponsorship Sting 1:
Version 1: Better Mornings with Square – Everything your business needs, like payments, POS, ecommerce, inventory management, chatting endlessly about the weather? You’re on your own there.
Square, Everything your business needs… almost. Visit Square.com

Sponsorship Sting 2:
Version 2: Better Mornings with Square – Everything your business needs, like payments, menu management, online ordering, chatting endlessly about the weather? You’re on your own there. Square,
Everything your business needs… almost. Visit Square.com

The complainant objected to the advertisement’s use of the term “everything” as they said that Squareup only supplied point-of-sale equipment and services. The complainant said that this was a very specific niche business requirement and that it was therefore pure hyperbole and exaggeration to claim that they provided “everything your business needs”. The complainant stated that Squareup did not offer any goods for resale, any media/advertising promotion services, any enterprise ICT services, any HR services, any enterprise accounting services, any legal services or any enterprise tax advice.

The advertisers stated that the fundamental message of the advertising campaign was the use of the word ‘almost’; the focus on examples of needs that Square cannot help with; the target audience of the campaign being business customers; and the humorous tone.
The advertisers said that the radio advertising highlighted the wide range of products and services offered to their business audience specifically by focusing on the many needs of small businesses for which Square cannot be of assistance. They explained that this was done in a format whereby the advertising gave examples of common challenges a small business may face for which Square offered a solution, along with a humorous example of another challenge a small business may face for which Square did not offer a solution. The advertisers said that they did not make the claim ‘everything your business needs’ as stated by the complainant, but rather ‘everything your business needs – almost’ and that the complainant omitted this qualifier within their complaint. The advertisers said that the emphasis on the qualifier ‘almost’ within the advertising made it clear that Square was not suggesting that they could provide ‘everything a business needs’ and that this was not small print, but rather the focus of the advertising campaign.

The advertisers said that while Square was most well-known for offering point-of-sale (POS) readers and terminals, they could substantiate that they did in fact offer a much wider range of products and services for businesses of all sizes beyond POS systems. As above, they said that they did not make a claim that Square provided ‘everything your business needs’, as this would omit the context of the broader message. They said the aim of the ‘almost’ campaign was to draw attention to the wider portfolio of solutions and while they did not claim they could actually help with ‘everything’, they did provide a wide range of goods and services that helped with the most critical and fundamental aspects of running a small business (the target audience) – like managing payments, customers and inventory – as mentioned in the advertising.

The advertisers noted the complainant’s comments that Square did not provide offerings such as ‘enterprise ICT services’ or ‘HR services’, however they said that while those services may be relevant to some businesses, they were especially unlikely to be considered a ‘need’ by the kind of businesses referenced in the advertising, i.e. small retail businesses and local barbers. They said the services they did provide were more universal; nearly all businesses needed some way to accept payments, manage customers, and track inventory. Noting that the complainant also referenced ‘media advertising/promotion services’ as examples of Square’s inability to offer ‘everything’, the advertisers said that, while not mentioned in the advertising in question, Square did in fact offer a range of solutions to help small businesses market themselves (1).

The advertisers said that the context of the target audience was important as the target audience in this case was the businesses referenced in the advertising, such as small retail shops and local barbers. The advertisers said that this business audience tended to have a knowledge and experience of business-to-business products and services that was important in understanding how their advertising was perceived. The advertisers referenced Code section 4.2 which allowed for exaggeration, puffery and hyperbole provided it was unlikely to mislead or affect the accuracy or perception of the marketing communication in any material way. The advertisers said that although they were proud of the wide range of their portfolio, they did not believe that their business target audience could genuinely consider their message to be a claim that Square provided quite literally every good or service a business could hypothetically need, particularly in advertising focused on things Square could not do. The advertisers said that given it was not uncommon for retailers and businesses to promote themselves with some variant of the phrase ‘Everything you need’, they did not believe there would be a perception amongst any business customers that any one business supplier claimed to offer literally everything as clearly no such business supplier existed. The advertisers said that the business customers who made up their target audience understood this to refer to offering a wide range of products for a particular context, purpose or target market, namely helping small businesses get up and running by managing payments, inventory, and customers.

The advertisers stated that they took the ASAI Code very seriously and that all their marketing communications were subject to multi-stage review before publishing. They said that care was taken to ensure that this campaign would not cause confusion amongst their audience.

(1) https://squareup.com/ie/en/software/marketing

Complaint Not Upheld.

The Complaints Committee considered the detail of the complaint and the advertisers’ response.
The Committee noted that the advertisements had included details of some of the services offered by the advertiser to their clients in the small business sector, in particular, the retail sector and they considered that the list of services included clarified the type of businesses serviced. The Committee noted the Code requirements in regard to the use of hyperbole as referenced by the advertisers, which stated that obvious untruths, exaggeration or deliberate hyperbole that are unlikely to mislead, incidental minor inaccuracies and unorthodox spellings are not necessarily in conflict with the Code provided they do not affect the accuracy or perception of the marketing communication in any material way. They also noted the Code requirement that compliance with the code is assessed in the light of a marketing communication’s probable effect when taken as a whole and in context. In this case, the Committee did not consider that the advertising had affected the accuracy or perception of the marketing communication in any material way and therefore, did not consider that it was in breach of the Code on the grounds raised.

Action Required:
No further action required.