Note: This advice is given by the CAP Executive about non-broadcast advertising. It does not constitute legal advice. It does not bind CAP, CAP advisory panels or the Advertising Standards Authority.
The ASA has investigated several complaints made about funeral services. Those investigations have mainly focussed on the advertisers’ descriptions of their businesses as independent, family-owned or family-run.
To be able to describe their business as independent, marketers should be able to demonstrate that they are legally separate from other funeral services or chains. During an investigation in 2004, the ASA noted that, although some of a funeral service’s shareholders owned shares in other funeral companies, the business was registered as a private limited company that was a member of Selected Independent Funeral Homes. The ASA considered that the shareholders’ other interests did not prevent that company from being described as independent (Michael Miller & Partners, 21 July 2004). A subsequent investigation (The Fairways Partnership Ltd, 23 February 2005) ruled that the Jno Steel & Son funeral home could not be described as an independent business, because it was owned by a company that ran 43 other funeral homes.
The term ”family-owned” essentially asserts independence on the basis of that family ownership. Funeral services could be independent without necessarily being family-owned, for example if the business was a small concern whose shareholders were unrelated. Marketers should take special care when claiming their company is “independent” if their company name or another element of the advertisement reinforces that description. In July 2000, the ASA upheld a complaint against Neville Funeral Services Ltd, trading as G Hall & Sons. The complainant had challenged the description “independent family-owned business” on the understanding that G Hall & Sons was part of a parent company. The ASA considered that consumers would infer that the business was owned by a family named Hall. Because G Hall & Sons was, in fact, owned by the descendents of the Neville family, the Authority told the marketers to amend their advertising to clarify that the description referred to the parent company.
Marketers should distinguish between “family-run”, which refers to the day-to-day consumer face of the business, and “family-owned”, which implies independent family ownership. The ASA has drawn that distinction between those terms and did not uphold complaints challenging the claim “family-run”, where a non-independent service had retained a family staff base (The Fairways Partnership Ltd, 23 February 2005).
Given the subtleties surrounding the use of descriptions incorporating the word “family”, marketers should be especially careful. For example, referring to a funeral service as a “family business” is ambiguous and its interpretation could depend on its context. That phrase could be taken as meaning family-owned, family-run or both. In 2003, the ASA considered that “family funeral directors” was likely to imply that the business was family-owned (Alan Greenwood & Sons, 10 December 2003). Because of the possible misunderstanding, CAP urges marketers to use the relevant specific phrase unless the business is both owned and run by the same family.
As always, marketers should hold evidence for claims capable of objective substantiation (Rule 3.7). As well as those already mentioned, they include claims such as “established 1957”, “Serving the community since 1860”, “40 years of experience” and “the oldest independent family business in Uckfield” (The Traditional Family Funeral Company, 23 February 2005, and The Fairways Partnership Ltd, 23 February 2005).
Last modified : 29 July 2010