Express criticised by ASA for masking advertorials as features

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The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has criticised the Express for a series of editorial articles that intentionally attempted to 'circumvent' the ASA's code.

The articles, which individually dealt with products LadyCare, Copper Heelers and LIPOblind, were presented as full-page features with the top half of the pages given over to an article containing information and 'efficacy claims' for the product.

Beneath each feature was an advert promoting the same product and containing further information, including details of where the products could be bought.

The features were published repeatedly by the paper over a number of weeks: four times in ten weeks in the case of the Copper Heelers article and three times in two months for the LadyCare piece.

The articles, written by Alison Coleman, were also published under the heading 'express lifestyle - to advertise in this section call 0871 xxx xxxx or e-mail'.

Monitoring staff at ASA, who had launched an investigation into the articles, challenged whether the features had been controlled by the advertiser and also whether the claims made by the products were true or exaggerated in the pieces.

In its defence the Express asserted that Coleman had followed normal journalistic practice when conducting research by contacting the company and sending them her finished piece to be checked for factual inaccuracies. But the ASA upheld the findings of the monitoring team and suggested that both publisher and advertiser were purposefully trying to get around elements of the advertising code by presenting the articles and adverts in this way.

The industry body concluded that the features were always favourable towards the products written about and advertised beneath and made claims that would usually be prohibited in adverts.

Although it is normal for adverts to run many times in the same format, it is very unusual for journalistic copy to be presented more than once in the same format, the agency said in its adjudications.

"[T]hese pages and the nature of the articles strongly suggested a commercial arrangement existed between the newspaper and the advertiser and that the advertiser exerted a sufficient degree of control over the content of the articles to warrant the term 'Advertisement feature' or the like being placed above the articles," it said.

The ASA has told the Express and the advertisers in question to clearly identify their advertisement features as adverts in the future.