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Complaint against Weet-Bix claim dismissed

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has dismissed a complaint against Pioneer Foods for claiming Weet-Bix is "The number one cereal in South Africa".

"There appears to be nothing in the respondent's television commercial that would suggest to consumers that the claim relates to value market share, as opposed to volume market share," it said in its ruling on Friday.

"The directorate also notes that the complainant provided no motivation for its submission that consumers may also interpret the claim to mean that Weet-Bix is the most preferred cereal brand in South Africa."

Tiger Consumer Brands, which lodged the complaint, argued that consumers would interpret the claim to mean that Weet-Bix was bought by more consumers in South Africa than any other breakfast cereal.

It said this implied that Weet-Bix should be the number one breakfast cereal in South Africa by volume.

Tiger Consumer Brands submitted a slide from Nielsen, an information and measurement company, headed "In Segment Volume/Value Shares: RTE Breakfast" (ready to eat breakfast), which showed that Kellogg's had the highest share in the market for sales volumes for ready to eat breakfast cereals, and that Weet-Bix was second.

In response Pioneer Foods pointed out that the complainant's comparison between Weet-Bix, a single product which was part of the Bokomo Foods brand, and the Kellogg's brand, which consisted of a number of different products, was "unreasonable and irrelevant".

The ASA said: "The directorate agrees with the respondent that the relevant market share comparison in the present matter is not between Weet-Bix and Kellogg's, but rather between Weet-Bix and other individual cereal products, including the individual products that fall under the Kellogg's brand, such as Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Kellogg's All Bran Flakes."

The authority found that Pioneer Foods had not contravened the code of advertising practice.

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