AN advert for Sky broadband featuring Minions characters must not be broadcast again after it was ruled “misleading” by a standards watchdog.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint against the advert, put in by competitor BT, saying that it implied Sky broadband had an “almost magic-like quality”.
The advert, which was broadcast in October 2022, featured Minion characters from the popular Despicable Me movie series all trying to use the internet in a single house.
All the characters are shown having trouble with their connection, before the old rickety router they were using magically becomes a new Sky “Hub 4”.
After the transformation, the formerly black and white Minion house is brought alive with colour as one character begins “skating between rooms and shooting spell-like beams towards the blank devices”.
BT complained to the ASA, challenging whether “the ad misleadingly implied that customers would receive seamless Wi-Fi in every room of a house, including hard-to-reach places with coverage issues”.
The watchdog has now ruled that the advert did breach rules in terms of misleading advertising and exaggeration, and said that it “must not appear again in its current form”.
The ASA ruled: “We considered the ad portrayed the switch to Sky broadband with an almost magic-like quality...
“The tone of the ad after the switch to Sky was also gleeful with Minions cheering and celebrating when the devices worked, and the ad concluded with Minions dancing with disco lights in the basement.
“We therefore considered that viewers would be likely to understand from the ad that Sky’s fibre broadband service provided Wi-Fi coverage throughout a reasonably sized home. Also, in instances where patchy Wi-Fi or signal problems occurred, the signal strength and coverage of Wi-Fi could be significantly improved.”
The watchdog added: “We understood that the fibre broadband offering in the ad related to the Sky Hub 4 router, and did not otherwise feature any equipment that would boost the range or speed of Wi-Fi beyond that of a standard router…
“However, we understood that there was not otherwise any features of the service that could improve Wi-Fi coverage across the home or intermittent signal, as we considered the ad would likely be interpreted by viewers.”
Sky also offered a money-back guarantee if their router did not provide the advertised service, which small print made clear was for WiFi of at least 3mb/s in 12 rooms of a house.
ASA ruled that this was “insufficient in counteracting the overall impression that Sky’s broadband service could improve patchy Wi-Fi”.
Sky declined to comment.
You can read ASA’s full ruling here.
