The Advertising Code Committee ruled on complaints against advertising by Vattenfall. The company was found guilty of misleading advertising. A brief analysis.
The Advertising Code Committee ruled late last year on two complaints against advertisements by energy supplier Vattenfall. The cases concerned a television commercial and a newspaper advertisement suggesting that Vattenfall generates energy exclusively from clean sources such as wind, hydro and solar.
The Commission ruled that these statements were misleading because they painted an incomplete picture of Vattenfall’s current power generation.
An ambition or reality?
The complaints revolved around whether Vattenfall’s advertisements gave the impression that its energy comes entirely from renewable sources. The Advertising Code Committee considered that Vattenfall did not make sufficiently clear in the advertisements that this was a future ambition and not the current factual situation.
The average consumer, after seeing the commercial or reading the ad, gets the impression that almost all the energy supplied by Vattenfall is already generated from clean sources. In reality, that is only part of it.
Misleading ads
Because this is not made clear and the focus is entirely on clean energy, the Commission ruled that the expressions are misleading.
Violation of the Environmental Advertising Code
According to the Commission, the advertisements violate Article 2 of the Environmental Advertising Code (MRC). This article states that an environmental claim may not contain a suggestion that misleads consumers about an advertiser’s contribution to a cleaner environment. The suggestion that Vattenfall already makes full use of clean energy sources does not meet this standard.
Recommendation: adjust advertisements
The Advertising Code Committee recommends Vattenfall to stop advertising that does not sufficiently explain the factual situation. The focus on clean energy should be placed in the right context to give consumers a realistic picture.
