April 10, 2017

An email from Lands’ End clothing company, received on 10 October 2016, stated “Hello [complainant’s name]. Thank you for visiting landsend.co.uk” and included various product listings.

The ASA received a complaint from an unwilling recipient of the email. On the evidence the complainant had submitted his contact details via the website of a partner of Clic-Plan, who supplied data to an email re-targeting agency. Whilst the ASA recognised that in order to submit this information, the complainant would have had to tick a box next to a statement which read “You understand and agree that you are establishing a business relationship with our network of affiliate partners”, it considered that the nature of those third parties or the types of communications that consumers might receive was not clear.

Because there was no clear connection between the types of services provided by the website the complainant signed up to and those provided by Lands’ End, the ASA considered that the complainant would not have anticipated receiving marketing communications from Lands’ End as a result of submitting his details to the partner website.

Since the ASA considered that Lands’ End had primary responsibility for ensuring that its marketing communications complied with the Advertising Codes, and should be able to demonstrate that consumers had provided explicit consent to receive its marketing communications, the ASA concluded that the complainant had not given his explicit consent to receive marketing communications from Lands’ End and that the ad therefore breached CAP Code rules 10.13 and 10.13.3 (Database practice). To read ASA Ruling on Lands’ End Europe Ltd t/a landsend.co.uk (29 March 2017) in full, click here.