David Tennant's Bye Bye Buffering Virgin Ad Removed By The ASA



The Advertising Standards Authority have upheld complaints that the claims made by Virgin Media in one of their recent adverts featuring David Tennant are misleading.

The ad in question features David swinging a baseball bat to smash an internet buffering wheel to pieces and  includes the claim that "Now from Virgin Media, you could say goodbye to buffering with superfast fibre-optic broadband" . 






The ASA ruled that although they agreed that the word 'could' suggest, as Virgin say they intended, that the new superfast broadband speeds significantly reduced streaming interruptions or delays, it equally carried the implication that signing up to the Virgin service would provide a complete solution to these issues. They felt that the image of the buffering symbol being destroyed by David Tennant strengthened this claim. They ruled that the ad broke the industry code on the grounds on misleading advertising, substantiation and exaggeration and ruled that it should not appear again in its current form.Read the ASA ruling here.

Virgin Media are no stranger to controversy over their high profile campaigns for their multi-media services. In July their campaign featuring Usain Bolt was pulled from screens following complaints about similar claims made about their high speeed internet service. Earlier this year, Virgin removed one of their TiVo ads featuring David following complaints from BBC Worldwide that the onscreen prominence of their logos implied some sort of support of the product.

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