Motorola Censured Over UK Advertising Campaign

Mot­orola has been censured over a UK advertising campaign for its DEXT smartphone. ­The company had run a television advert that claimed that the smartphone was "The first phone with social skills", leading to a complaint from rival phone manufacturer, INQ Mobile - who argued that their own handsets has similar features before the Motorola handset was announced.

Motorola said the claim "The first phone with social skills" was not a claim at all, since it expressed no objectively measurable statement of fact. Whilst first was objectively measurable the concept of social skills was too vague to be objectively measurable. Social skills referred to a variety of individual behaviours involving good manners, etiquette and the personal skills needed for social interaction. There was no measurement to determine if the phone had social skills, indeed, inanimate objects such as phones could not possess social skills. They therefore found it unrealistic that a consumer would be misled. The claim was not intended, nor should it be understood as a claim that the phone was the first to integrate social networking applications.

However, they said that even if the claim was understood in the way the complainant suggested, their phone brought a unique offering to the market place and was superior to the INQ phone in terms of its functionality and the integration of its social networking features, and the claim was therefore justified.

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) noted the ad showed the phone streaming different social networking sites. Although the ASA said that it noted there were differences in the way the Motorola Dext and INQ phone functioned, because they considered the advert implied the Motorola DEXT was the first phone to integrate social networking applications in one place, but that was not the case, they concluded the claim was misleading.

The ASA ruled that the advert cannot be shown again in its current form. Although the ASA has no statutory authority to block adverts, the industry follows its rulings.