Industry News
BRIC: ASA adjudication on Sheila’s Wheels ad is ‘perverse’
6th April 2006
The Advertising Standards Authority has delivered an adjudication on a complaint from The Body Repair Industry Campaign (BRIC) which objected to a direct mail leaflet, magazine insert and magazine ad for women's car insurance offered by Sheila’s Wheels, a brand of the esure Peter Woods/HBOS joint venture.
Text inside the leaflet stated " ... So all of our registered repairers undergo training to ensure they understand the concerns women drivers have ... ", and "Our recommended repairers are trained to be female friendly ... ".
The complainants challenged whether Sheilas' Wheels repairers had received specific training to deal with female customers. esure said they had developed a network of repairers who were contracted to undertake repairs for a number of brands, including Sheilas' Wheels.
They said they surveyed a selection of their repairers to establish views on what they perceived to be the concerns of female customers and incorporated feedback into a Best Practice Guidelines report, which was then distributed amongst all repairers in the network. They submitted samples of the survey and the final guidelines and explained that repairers were contractually obliged to adhere to the best practice guidelines.
esure said they distributed a training pack to all repairers, which referred specifically to the repairers' obligations under the best practice guidelines, including those instructions designed with female customers in mind. They said regular meetings with repairers monitored the advice given in the training pack and reinforced the need to provide a 'female friendly' approach to customer service where appropriate. They sent in examples of meeting minutes and a training pack for the ASA’s consideration.
The ASA investigated the ads under CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness) but did not find them in breach.
BRIC has issued a news release complaining that the ASA adjudication is ‘perverse’, in suggesting that despatch of the product announcement to esure's repairers and the updating of its standing instructions could be deemed to be “training”. The Sheila’s Wheels instruction delivered by esure’s Repairernet email consists, reports BRIC, of some two and half pages of text under the heading “Customer Service Guidelines”. References to female drivers are contained at two points in the text on the front page, as follows: “Female customers may be cautious about accepting delivery of car during hours of darkness if they are at home on their own”; and “Consider requirements for customers in vulnerable situations, stranded at roadside, female customers, etc…”
BRIC felt that these references were insufficient to justify the statements made about the product.
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