CAR supermarket The Trade Centre Wales has had complaints over a TV advert and two radio ads rejected.
The company has three outlets, given as Neath, Merthyr and Cardiff North, and three people contacted the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to challenge whether claims that it was in ‘Cardiff North’, as mentioned in the adverts, was misleading as the office was in Abercynon, which was more than 10 miles north of Cardiff.
In response, The Trade Centre Wales said ‘The Trade Centre Wales – Cardiff North’ was the trading name of its business north of Cardiff in Abercynon. It added that it was within the Cardiff postcode of CF45 4XA and was on the A470 that ran directly from Cardiff city centre.
It told the ASA that more than 800 car shoppers visited the branch from across the south-west of the UK each week and that a large number of customers travelled to the Cardiff North branch from areas such as Bristol, Gloucester, Hereford, Monmouthshire and Newport. It stated that if it were to rebrand the business the location would not be immediately apparent to the customers visiting from those areas.
Clearcast, the organisation that clears adverts for broadcast on the main commercial channels, said the wording of the branch name didn’t mean a direct geographical location of north Cardiff, adding that it accepted the name as a branch name at the time of clearance and didn’t ask for the exact location to be supported by facts.
The ASA didn’t uphold the complaints, saying it concluded that the branch name ‘Cardiff North’ wasn’t misleading and didn’t breach any advertising codes.
In its ruling, the watchdog said it considered that in the context of a car dealership, consumers – including those who weren’t from the Cardiff area – would understand the name ‘Cardiff North’ from the ads to mean that the branch was in the north of the Cardiff area and likely to be easily accessible from nearby areas. It also said it recognised that the name was the branch’s trading name.
As such, no further action was deemed necessary.
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