Latest General News For PromoVeritas Project News
Ofcom fines BBC £400,000 for "faking winners of competitions" - Added July 2008
The BBC was fined a record £400,000 by Ofcom for "deceiving its audiences by fakings winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly" . Shows including Comic Relief, the Russell Brand Show and Children in Need all ran consumer promotions that were non-compliant. PromoVeritas now work with the BBC on shows such as Eurovision Song Contest.
ASA Compliance Review underway - Added July 2008
The ASA are conducting a large scale review of on pack promotion with a view to measuring the level of compliance in both packaging, communication and back end implementation. Promoters all over the country are being written to with a request to submit details of their terms and conditions, how they distributed instant winners or judged competitions or selected prize draws. Results of the review are likely by the end of 2008.
Huge Fine for GCAP Radio - owners of Capital Radio - Added June 2008
Ofcom this month fined GCAP Radio £1.11m for "unfair conduct in a listener competition". Ofcom found that on a number of occasions programme makers deliberately put to air entrants with incorrect answers in order to prevent the prize from being won too soon. As a result, those listeners who had paid to enter frequently had no chance of winning.
Unfair Trading Regulations Now in Full Force - Added 26th May 2008
The Unfair Trading Regulations outlaw 31 trading practices some of which will have a major impact on mainstream promoters and some of the cleverer marketing techniques such as blogs and viral or buzz marketing. For more information click here
Office of Fair Trading imposes compliance agreement on Sports Direct - Added 20th May 2008
Having been accused of displaying "closing down" sales posters for several months in stores that did not close, Sports Direct retailing have agreed not to run ads that give the impression of a store closure, that consumers have only a limited amount of time to purchase goods or only a limited quantity of products are available, when this is not the case.
Eurovision Song Contest 2008 Voting was overseen by PromoVeritas - Added 25th May 2008
PromoVeritas were privileged to have been selected by the BBC to act as the independent auditors for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest . Our role was to supervise the live phone vote and a back up jury vote for both the semi-final and the Final. Although the results may not have been what the UK public wanted, at least everything went well from an operational point of view. This builds on several other projects completed for the BBC including the 2007 Sports Personality of The Year Award.
New Rules For Broadcasters require Independent Audits - Added 2nd May 2008
For Broadcasters: New Ofcom rules come into force in June 2008, requiring you to have independent audits for your Premium Rate Service votes or competitions etc.
News Archive
For information of our 2007 news stories, click here.
