The ASA has upheld a complaint in relation to an on-pack promotion where the promoter failed to include the significant terms and conditions on the promotional pack.
The promoter, Future Farm Plant-Based Food UK Ltd (trading as ‘Future Farm’), ran a prize promotion to win a £1,000 shopping spree. The promotion was featured on the packaging of the company's ‘Future Burger’, which included the line “WIN £1000 BUY ME AND SCAN TO ENTER *T&C’S APPLY”.
According to the ASA, the promotional pack didn’t feature any terms and conditions at all, just a QR code which, when scanned, took the consumer to the promoter’s website, which also lacked any terms and conditions.
There were in fact some terms and conditions that applied to the promotion, but these were listed in an Instagram post from December 2023. The closing date was stated to be 31 January 2024 and the winner was to be drawn two weeks after that date.
The problem was that the complainant bought the product on 9 February and managed to submit their entry on 25 February – a full 25 days after the promotion ended and 11 days after the winner had presumably already been selected.
This highlights one of the key issues when running on-pack promotions.
Once the promotional packs leave the factory, the promoter will generally have very little control over what happens to those packs. Depending on the shelf-life of the product, they may remain on shelves long after the promotion has ended, and this may not be immediately obvious to consumers who pick these packs up and drop them in their baskets. For this reason, it is very important to include important terms such as an end date on the promotional pack itself.
Indeed, the CAP Code requires all significant conditions to be included on pack, to ensure that consumers know whether they are eligible and are aware of any limitations and exclusions that may apply to them.
Future Farm didn’t bother responding to the ASA’s enquiries, which is an automatic upheld ruling (rule 1.7). However, it is also a bit of a shame, as we don’t know whether they stuck with the original end date or extended it to allow more consumers to enter. Either way, the outcome of the ASA investigation would have been the same, because there are very limited circumstances in which an end date can be changed without breaching the CAP Code.
Changing the closing date is a common temptation, especially when a promotion is going well. Why not just keep a good thing going? Promoters will often think this is a reasonable thing to do, because it allows more people the chance to enter. However, it actually has a negative impact on those who have already entered , because they now face increased competition from those who have been allowed to enter after that original end date.
In the end, the ASA really threw the book at Future Farm, upholding the complaint for breaching rules 1.7 (Unreasonable delay), 8.1 (Promotional marketing), 8.2, 8.17, 8.17.1, 8.17.4, 8.17.4.a, 8.17.4.e, 8.17.6, 8.18 (Significant conditions for promotions), 8.28 and 8.28.4 (Prize promotions).
However, the takeaway is that promoters cannot rely on QR codes – with or without the phrase ‘T&Cs apply’ – to do all the heavy lifting. Although a QR code broadly does the job of providing a link to where the full T&Cs can be found, the T&Cs actually need to be available on the landing page consumers are sent to! And the most significant terms and limitations still need to appear on the promotional pack itself.
the closing date, the nature of the prize (whether it was in cash or vouchers), how and when winners would be notified and how many prizes there were, were significant conditions, and because they had been omitted from the packaging, and not provided via an easily accessible alternative source, that the promotion again breached the Code
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