EA Tiger Woods advert branded "misleading" by ASA

Uses Xbox footage for Wii advert

18 December 2008 11:14 GMT / By Verity Burns

The Advertising Standards Authority has slapped the wrists of Electronic Arts, after they used Xbox 360 gameplay footage from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 in an advert for a Wii version of the game.

Branding the advert as "misleading", the advert features Woods himself swinging a Wii remote around, yet playing the Xbox version. An eagle-eyed gamer spotted the mix-up and complained.

EA defended itself, telling the ASA that footage of the Wii game "would not be of broadcast quality", and that the ad did feature text stating the game was available in multiple formats in an attempt to avoid confusion.

"They explained that Wii footage would not be of broadcast quality, and the originating agency had thought it preferable to use the Xbox footage, which was closer to broadcast definition, than to 'up the resolution' of Wii footage to broadcast quality", said the ASA.

However the ASA upheld the complaint.

"Although we acknowledged that the message 'available on all formats' appeared in the final scene, we considered that viewers would infer from the ad that Tiger Woods was playing the game on a Wii console and the graphics shown behind him were representative of the actual game he was playing", it said.

"Because viewers would not be able to achieve the graphical quality shown in the ad on a Wii console, we concluded that the ad was misleading".

The ASA ruled that the advert cannot be broadcast again "in its current form".

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