ASA bans misleading marketing job advert

Thu, 29 Jul 2010

The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against an online job advert placed by London Marketing Services of Shand Street, London.

The complainant challenged that the ad, headlined ‘Marketing training role: we will train’ and further down ‘Job type: Permanent’, was misleading as they believed the vacancies were for door-to-door sales people and were based only on commission.

In its assessment, the ASA stated: “We considered the overall impression of the ad meant the text ‘We cover all areas of direct marketing, as a company we work with all aspects of the marketing field. Pay is entirely performance based’ was not sufficient to make clear that the role involved, we understood, door-to-door sales, and that the salary was based on commission only.

‘We considered that information should have been made clear in the ad itself to avoid misleading potential applicants. We concluded that the ad was misleading.’