Filed under: Bad Apple, iPhone
UK watchdog bans 'really fast' iPhone TV ads
The BBC reported today that a TV ad for the iPhone has been banned in the UK by the government's advertising standards watchdog group for being misleading.
The Advertising Standards Authority received 17 complaints about the ad above, which showed web pages, the Maps application, and mail attachments loading in fractions of a second. The group said that the ad "led viewers to believe that the device actually operated at or near the speeds shown," the BBC story read.
The ASA said after reviewing the complaints, "Because we understood that it did not, we concluded the ad was likely to mislead."
Apple argued that the claims in the spot were "relative rather than absolute in nature," comparing the 3G speeds to the speeds of the first-generation iPhone. Nevertheless, the ad cannot be run on UK airwaves again in its current form.
One of the complainants was a man named Roger Browning, who said in a post at The Guardian that he complained about the advertisement as retribution for a bad customer support experience he had with O2.
Apple has run afoul of the ASA before, with a claim in August that the iPhone could view "the whole Internet." Since the iPhone doesn't support Flash and Java, the agency decided the ads were misleading, and yanked them off-air.
[Via MacDailyNews.]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
balls said 2:35PM on 11-26-2008
Not a fan of government regulation in this case, but the ad is pretty much full of shit.
Reply
waiownsyou said 2:59PM on 11-26-2008
Agreed. I believe every ad should have an asterisk that says the phone will not support MMS natively.
Hickeroar said 3:06PM on 11-26-2008
yeah the first time I saw this ad I knew the UK would end up canning it. 3G on the iPhone is nowhere near that fast. Heck, Wifi on the iPhone is slower than that.
rptb1 said 5:43AM on 11-27-2008
The ASA isn't the government, isn't funded by the government. It is self-regulation by the advertising industry.
balls said 11:44AM on 11-27-2008
@rptb1: I stand corrected. In my defense, I'm a yank and I took the blog post at face value.
CaptSaltyJack said 3:00PM on 11-26-2008
In this case, I'm glad the government stepped in. Who else is going to have the power to call BS and lock down stupid ads like this one? Apple should be ashamed.
Reply
LD said 3:03PM on 11-26-2008
Are you dumb enough to believe what you see in product advertisements as absolute truth? Can't you think for yourself? Do you need a gov't nanny?
required said 4:05PM on 11-26-2008
Giving corporations the right to lie is a bit silly LD. It opens a huge can of skanky worms like bait and switch.
CaptSaltyJack said 4:05PM on 11-26-2008
You're a moron. Obviously *I* personally don't believe this ad (or many other ads) are true. But there are many people who don't know any better. They're not dumb, either, they're just not tech savvy like we are and have no way of knowing that the iPhone really isn't this fast.
Sorry things appear so black & white to you.
LSD said 3:16PM on 11-26-2008
RE: LD
No we are not dumb, thats why we won't let Apple treat us as such with their dumb advert. The real dumbsters are the apologists like yourself who believe everything Apple spoon feeds them.
Reply
LD said 3:59PM on 11-26-2008
So you aren't dumb, and you know that these ads are just ads, not real life representations. Correct?
Then why does the gov't need to step in? Or do you believe you aren't dumb, but most other people are?
Do you think those beer ads are truthful? Do they make you cool and get your girls? How about that Citroen ad that had the car transform? It doesn't really transform, should that be banned in the UK? What if a movie advertises to the "the funniest" or "the scariest" but it really isn't? Does that get banned?
I'm sure we could post dozens or hundreds of ads that run in the UK that aren't "truthful" on their face.
south said 7:25PM on 11-26-2008
to LD: we'd probably have no problem with the ad if it just showed faster-than-real visuals, but the entire thrust of this ad is "really fast", which the voiceover repeats about 20 times. Thus, it's misleading at best and outright lying at worst.
greenbook said 3:20AM on 11-27-2008
to LD:
I think you are confusing ads which are obviously fictional. No reasonable person would actually believe that the cars could transform. In terms of describing things as "the best", or the "funniest", this is clearly just puff, and reasonable people would know this, as such descriptions could not be anything more than subjective anyway, as no objective data is provided for such claims, and in any case people expect companies to describe their products in such terms. However for a person who is not aware of the speeds 3G can attain, they could be very easily (I would actually say likely) be tricked into thinking that the speeds demonstrated in the add are true representations of what they could expect (albeit perhaps the best they could expect) using an iPhone. Nothing in the ad would really indicate that the iPhone being used is not operating differently from how any real iPhone would operate. This is the humble opinion of an Australian Lawyer — I'm not up to date on English Laws in this area.
basscadet said 5:50AM on 11-27-2008
This ad is particularly misleading (as opposed to other products' creative concept ads) because it's made to look like a real life product demonstration. We don't see a unicorn buying us beer and having it served by Hooters' waitresses, we see what Apple wants us to believe the iPhone does. Although advertising time is restricted (and costly) and a certain pace should be kept in order not to lose interest, there are other features worth noting that would make this ad a lot more sincere.
Jacob B said 3:15PM on 11-26-2008
I'm not surprised.
But the new ads are just as bad. The new ones aim to show how quick and easy it is to download from the apps store - but actually states that steps have been removed and speeded up in the advert.
If they are going to show something it should at least be real. Other ads are great. Shows a set of hands playing a game, then after a few seconds that person moves off screen and another person is revealed. This goes on and on with around 20 sets of hands/iPods.
Reply
Bryanamo said 3:42PM on 11-26-2008
People are stupid, who cares if the commercial shows the applications working faster. Maybe Verizon commercials should be banned because you don't get the network of people following you around.....there is much worse false advertising than this crap.
Reply
Dale said 4:07PM on 11-26-2008
Well seeing as there are millions of people in the world, I think someone must give a damn?
Verizon doesn't have any relevance to the UK.
Try again.
Brynamo said 4:35PM on 11-26-2008
Verizon is just an example, I don't live in the UK to see their commercials and come up with a UK example. Either way, you don't decide to buy a device based a commercial, the advertisement is what gets you in the store to try the device. If you see a commercial and immediately want to buy it, I would recommend staying away from the QVC channel, because those infomercials are a crock.
NJA said 3:33PM on 11-26-2008
The issue is they show web pages loading in split seconds and links clicked within another split second. This is not how it works in reality and that's why it received complaints and was considered misleading. If they'd put a nice notice explaining 'edited, not typical performance, dramatised, etc' then they'd have less reason to call it misleading. I like how there's quick action when people complain about being mislead, unlike other countries which only get concerned over a half-time boob popping out.
Reply
Robert Lindsley said 4:07PM on 11-26-2008
That ad had two things wrong with it:
1) It showed 3G as 'fast'
2) The phone didn't crash at all
The iPhone 3G is the biggest piece of junk I've ever owned. Slow and crashy, that phone is!
Reply