Promoting facts

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said yesterday that it had upheld 17 complaints about Nicoventures Trading’s Vype website at www.govype.com.
A number of other claims were said to have been informally resolved after the advertiser had agreed to remove them.
Johnson & Johnson Ltd, which was said by the ASA to have understood that only factual content was permitted on marketers’ own websites for unlicensed nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes and their components, challenged whether 20 statements made on the website were promotional claims, and therefore in breach of the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing (CAP Code).
The ASA said that factual claims about products are permitted on marketers’ own websites and, in certain circumstances, in other non-paid-for space online under the marketer’s control.
An inspection of the Vype site was apparently made on January 2.
The ASA’s ruling was that the website must not appear again in its ‘current’ form.
It said that it had told Nicoventures to remove the claims found to be in breach of the Code and to ensure that they did not use promotional claims for unlicensed nicotine-containing e-cigarettes or e-liquids on their website.
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