All Complainants

By E-mail

27 October 2009

Dear Sir/Madam,

YOUR COMPLAINT: ACT ON CO2 TV AND PRESS ADS

We have considered your complaint and will take it up with the advertisers, the
Department for Energy and Climate Change.

We intend to deal with your complaint under our formal investigations

procedure, which means that we will ask Clearcast (the Broadcast Advertising
Clearance Centre) and the Department for Energy and Climate Change to
comment on the complaint and send evidence to support the claims. We will
then refer your complaint to the ASA Council for adjudication. Once the
Council has made a decision, the adjudication will be published on our website.

We have received complaints about advertising in the campaign that covers

both broadcast and non-broadcast media. The different media are considered
by separate Councils, but all the ads will be investigated together. This means
that the investigation may take a little longer than usual but ensures that the
decisions reflect all the available information and are appropriate to the media.

We will be investigating the following points (please note the order differs
slightly from the list posted on our website last week) -

Complainants objected to the TV ad because they believed:

1. the ad was political in nature and should not be broadcast;

2. the theme and content of the ad, for example the dog drowning in the
storybook and the depiction of the young girl to whom the story was
being read, could be distressing for children who saw it;

3. the ad should not have been shown when children were likely to be
watching television;

Chairman Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury • Chief Executive Guy Parker

ASA Council Alison Goodman • Andrew Motion • Anthony Wilkes • Colin Philpott • David Harker • Diana Whitworth • Elizabeth Fagan • Gareth Jones • James
Best • Louisa Bolch • Neil Watts • Nigel Walmsley • Ruth Sawtell • Sally Cartwright • Susan Murray

The Advertising Standards Authority Limited, registered in England No 733214, Mid City Place, 71 High Holborn, London WC1V 6QT.
The Advertising Standards Authority (Broadcast) Limited, registered in England No 05130991, Mid City Place, 71 High Holborn, London WC1V 6QT.
 2

4. the ad was misleading because it presented human induced climate

change as a fact, when there was a significant division amongst the
scientific community on that point;

5. the claim “over 40% of the CO2 was coming from ordinary everyday
things” was misleading;

6. the representation of CO2 as a rising cloud of black smog was

misleading;

7. the claims about the possible advent of strange weather and flooding,
and associated imagery in the ad, in the UK were exaggerated,
distressing and misleading;

Some complainants objected to the press ad on the grounds of (4) and (7)
above and we will also be investigating those complaints.

Points (1) and (4) in relation to the TV ad may be subject to Section 4 of the
CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code, which is administered by
Ofcom. We will therefore be referring to Ofcom objections to the TV campaign
raised in respect of “political” objectives. Ofcom will in due course be publishing
a Finding of its determination. When both bodies have concluded their
investigations we plan to notify complainants of both our and Ofcom’s
decisions, and we will write to you again at that point.

Please treat all correspondence as confidential until such time as a decision is

published on our website.

Due to the postal strike and the particularly large volume of complaints
received, we regret that we have been unable to send personally addressed
correspondence on this occasion.

Yours sincerely