ASA Rule Over Starbucks

In the ultra-competitive oligopoly of the coffee world, Costa Coffee has gone one up against Starbucks ,after the rival coffee chain’s complaint to the advertising watchdog about Costa’s provocative ‘7 out of 10 coffee lovers prefer Costa’, campaign was rejected.

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled in Costa’s favour, after carrying out an investigation into the ad campaign which debuted in March last year. Starbucks had complained that the ads’ headlines “Starbucks Drinkers Prefer Costa” and “7 out of 10 Coffee Lovers Prefer Costa” were misleading, and that the research behind Costa’s claim was invalid.

The issue was that the phrase was believed to imply a preference for all Costa products, when it referred only to cappuccinos. Costa, which no longer uses the ad, disagreed and argued that the headline claims on their own were meaningless and were therefore incapable of substantiation.

The ASA ruled that no further action was necessary prompting Jim Slater, marketing director of Costa Coffee, to say: “Costa has been totally exonerated. The adjudication is good news, but not a surprise.”