1. The advertising watchdog has banned a Tesco ad campaign that implied
there were problems across "the whole food industry" in the wake of the
horsemeat scandal.
Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket chain, which in January ran apology
adverts in newspapers for selling beefburgers that contained horse meat, ran
a two-page national press campaign with the headline "What burgers have
taught us".
The ad campaign said that the problems that have arisen with meat is "about
more than burgers and Bolognese". "It's about some of the ways we get meat
to your dinner table. It's about the whole food industry," it added.
The Advertising Standards Authority received two complaints, one from an
independent butcher, that the ad was misleading in implying that there were
issues with meat standards across the whole food industry.
Tesco said that the ad was designed to show that it was serious about the
horsemeat issue and was listening to the public. It ended with the line: "We
know that our supply chain is too complicated. So we're making it simpler ...
Seriously. This is it. We are changing."
The company said that although not everyone in the food industry had been
implicated in selling horsemeat, each time testing was rolled out into another
sector further meat contamination had been found.
The ASA said that the ad featured words such as "we" and "our" to focus on
Tesco – but had omitted them in the line "It's about the whole food industry" –
which gave consumers a different understanding of the rest of the ad.
"Therefore, we concluded consumers would understand the ad referenced all
food retailers and suppliers, rather than Tesco alone," said the ASA.
"Because the ad implied that all retailers and suppliers were likely to have
sold products contaminated with horse meat, and because relatively few
instances of contamination had been identified at the time the ad appeared,
we concluded the ad was misleading."
The ASA banned the ad campaign.
Yellow and Blue: There is a small bit of market research in this article where
the writer has actually found out that Tesco’s is the UK’s largest supermarket
chain. There is also some marketing strategy as well as the advert, when
analysed, seemingly claims that it’s not just Tesco’s isn’t the only company
selling horsemeat products. This will make people think that everywhere else
is selling horsemeat as well. By doing this it means that Tesco’s sales won’t
be damaged too much because people will have no other choice of place to
shop because other places are selling horsemeat too.

2. Pink: and red: Tesco’s handled the horsemeat situation by advertising an
apology on a double page spread in a national newspaper. However, this
advertisement lead to complaints being made to the Advertising Standards
Authority, one from an independent butcher who had noticed the mixed
message that the advert gave off. This led to the advert being banned by the
ASA. By doing this advert, they were also promoting their brand by basically
saying ‘there’s horsemeat across the whole food industry so you’d be better
off shopping with us because we are quickly changing our stock’. This way,
consumers were more likely to stick to shopping at Tesco as they
acknowledged their mistake and are working on fixing it. Also, the apology,
which was published in national newspapers, will have made people glad that
the problem has been acknowledged and that the company have apologised
for their actions which will give them positive publicity and getting their name
out their so people will remember it and spread the word.
Teal and Green: From the horsemeat scandal you can see that Tesco is trying
to push a message out; this was to blame the whole food industry for having
contaminated meat. This isn’t the case as only Tesco and other businesses
had contaminated meat within there stock. They have used the ‘managing a
message effect’ on their advertising because they knew that they were going
to reach out to millions of people through watching TV and computer
advertisements, this would brain wash the public into thinking that the food
industry needs to improve and that it wasn’t really Tesco’s fault. The line that
they used through there advertisement was ‘we know that our supply chain is
too complicated’ and ‘we are changing’ this is an example of managing a
message because they are telling the public that (‘we’) the food industry is
complicated and that ‘we’ aren’t perfect, which is putting the blame on
everyone instead of there own business. For this reason the ASA decided that
the AD was misleading to the customers, by misleading it means Tesco can
still have there customers and the customers can write messages about how
the whole food industry is useless. It’s a clever way to make a message and
move the blame which is what Tesco has done to make there business more
innocent when they were actually negatively involved in the crime. The fact
that a butcher has complained about the advert shows that little business are
affected by the advertisement as well, this can damage the livelihood of
butcher shops and give more help towards bigger businesses like Tesco. The
ASA has seen this and banned the AD campaign. The ‘spin’ effect that has
been used is mostly for Tesco’s benefit, whilst the ASA has disagreed and
tried to prevent the advert from happening, Tesco has said that it wasn’t really
there fault by saying ‘we’ and ‘our’ which clearly presents that we shouldn’t be
angry with Tesco if there supplies come from the whole food industry. Tesco
has tried to prevent the blame by using the spin effect which has meant that
they can use their strategy to prevent them from losing there customers,
which means less sales and losing there entire Tesco brand. By giving the
customers a different understanding of the AD it means that they can still
shop at Tesco and just move the blame to somewhere else. By ASA fighting
back to the company it means customers now realise and understand what
the issue is.

3. Grey: The Horse meat story is a good example of damage limitation because I
think Tesco wanted to look as serious as possible but to only look like they
are caring about the issue. By fighting and protecting there name by saying
it’s ‘about more than burgers and Bolognese’ means that the situation is much
bigger than usual but they reduce the damage but saying further that ‘some of
the ways we get meat to your dinner table. It’s about the whole food industry’
this is less damaging because they have passed the blame to another source
so that there business is content and not damaged by the rumours and saying
it’s just Tesco fault for selling the contaminated meat.
Dark red: They are trying to change consumer views on the situation being
bad and trying to create some positive publicity for themselves by
acknowledging the problem and apologising about the situation. But a
complaint received by the ASA made the view of the consumers change again
by making them realise the mixed message that Tesco has given out. The
method that the lobbyist have used to talk about the horse meat scandal is to
try and bring another view point out of the situation by saying ‘that although
not everyone in the food industry had been implicated in selling horsemeat,
each time testing was rolled out into another sector further meat
contamination had been found’ this is saying that the food industry as a whole
still has some secrets about who has the meat contamination, by doing further
tests they have found that more and more business have the bad meat. The
more they discover the meat contamination the weaker the food industry will
look to the consumers. They have also said that by making the customers
understand easier then they can not be brainwashed by Tesco but instead
realise what went wrong with the supermarket and other business involved.