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DFS adverts banned

Wed Dec 03 11:56AM

Three DFS television adverts have been banned - not because they are annoying but because the sofas featured in the adverts were made to look bigger than they actually are.

The ads, which featured people miming to the Nickelback song ‘Rockstar', were declared misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority because the footage of actors singing was superimposed onto shots of sofas, making the furniture seem bigger than it was.

The watchdog, which received 21 complaints, said: "We considered that the production technique used in the ad meant that some of the sofas did appear large in relation to the actors. Because DFS had not been able to demonstrate that the sofas featured in the ad were accurate reflections of the actual sofas, we concluded that the ad was misleading."

DFS argued that customers visited their stores to examine items such as sofas before they bought them, and that any exaggeration in size would have caused widespread disappointment and large numbers of complaints to Trading Standards, which had not been the case.

The three advertising codes breached by the DFS campaign were that adverts must not mislead the public, that they must not imply qualities beyond those normally provided, and that they must not use visual techniques or special effects to mislead.

Comments51 - 60 of 529

Some folks seem to miss the point that adverts are used to entertain in order to get the public to remember the product/service/company being promoted.
Think about all the different Budweiser adverts.

From mankygoat on Wed Dec 03 12:41PM
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'Fraudulent misrepresentation'???? Are you serious? Surely any fool would no that a £499 sofa isn't going to be bigger than a fully grown adult, duh! Do the ASA think the public are all idiots - although looking at some of the responses on here, maybe they are right!!

From sharon.buckingham87 on Wed Dec 03 12:41PM
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...who cares? you don't like them watch sumthing else

From mattsprat1 on Wed Dec 03 12:41PM
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I think the blonde girl was the best bit of the add.

From rjsalufab on Wed Dec 03 12:41PM
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Nickelback should be banned!!!!

From snaptvr on Wed Dec 03 12:41PM
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Dyson banks, are f@$£ing kidding??? no wonder this s#*t is in the news, people like you complaing about an advert

From dantooine79 on Wed Dec 03 12:42PM
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This was always going to be one of the worst ads ever. The song is mediocre; and these people aren`t actors; they`re just `ordinary` people paid to do cheap singing-along in the ad. Moreover, I think it`d be too obvious that these sofas were enlarged. That is a breach of the regulations set.
The ads should have been banned from ever being made in the first place and the director needs some serious lessons in his abilities, since he`s got no right to fool people into believing that there could ever be sofas of that size for such a price as displayed!

From krishan_shah22 on Wed Dec 03 12:42PM
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screw DFS AND the mother @#$% ASA and that song they all get on my tiits. dont screw sofas!! there was a guy in my school that got caught doing this and he never has lived it down!!!!

From harrysemailshere on Wed Dec 03 12:42PM
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About time... stupid Nickelback are a plague on society...

From smileydudeinc on Wed Dec 03 12:42PM
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DFS? load old old Rubbish, sold by a bunch of Crooks!

From bobhoo2 on Wed Dec 03 12:43PM
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