What is it about company names containing the word British which Virgin Group objects to?
First we had the fight between Virgin Airlines and British Airways and now we have the battle royal between Virgin Media and British Telecom. The two groups have been at loggerheads for some months now but today it was the turn of Virgin Media to claim victory after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld Virgin’s complaint against the latest BT broadband advert.
The ad claims that BT broadband has been voted the Best performing Broadband provider, again although it is not made clear (unless you read the small print) that the performance of the service was only measured against other ADSL broadband providers. Virgin broadband for one is a service which does not use the ADSL technology therefore its speed data could not be used in the trials.
Virgin broadband argued that as certain groups were disqualified from the performance tables in question it did not give a fair reflection of the market as a whole and could be seen to be misleading as the small print was not easily distinguishable. The ASA has upheld the complaint and BT broadband will either need to amend the advert accordingly or drop it from future advertising slots.