The latest marketing news has shown that Virgin Media is the latest brand to go too far in claiming to be better than its biggest rival, with a direct mail campaign directly comparing itself to Sky Television.

As reported in the Guardian, the company’s “Why Virgin TV is better than Sky TV” campaign has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) following a complaint from BSkyB.

The campaign featured testimonials from supposed ex-Sky customers who were overwhelmingly critical of the satellite broadcaster’s customer service and picture quality. It also made claims that Virgin offered HD channels for free in comparison to Sky’s £10 monthly surcharge, as well as comparing Virgin’s special offer of a free set up with Sky’s £60 set-up fee.

BSkyB complained to ASA that the testimonials were denigrating and the claims were misleading to consumers. It said that Virgin had unfairly compared a special offer with BSkyB’s standard charges and had also failed to admit it had “significantly fewer” HD channels than BSkyB.

ASA backed these complaints, ruling that the claim “Why Virgin…is better than Sky” was denigratory rather than a fair comparison of services offered by both companies and that the comments were likely to mislead consumers. It also ruled in favour of Sky regarding the HD channels and prices, in particular the set-up fees as BSkyB was also offering a special offer of free set-up at the time of the campaign.

This is the second time that regulators have had to make a ruling in the rivalry between the two television providers. In 2008, BSkyB fell afoul of the Ofcom code for targeting Virgin media in a series of TV adverts which ran on its basic package channels on Virgin TV.

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