The ruling related to a promotion in The Sun newspaper by Complete Orlando which offered the opportunity to win a holiday if entrants submitted a re-creation of their favourite rollercoaster moment in a video or photo. The best few entries would be put on the Internet as the ‘finalists’ and be voted on by the public. The entry with the most votes would win the holiday. The initial rules stated that there would be five finalists published on the Internet, but 14 finalists were eventually available to vote upon due to the quality of the entries that the promoter believed they had received.

The ASA was of the opinion that entrants in the promotion before the rules changed might not have checked the website again to find that the rules had changed, and would have believed that they had a better chance of winning as one of five finalists rather than as one of 14. The ASA therefore decided that the promotion had been administered unfairly under the CAP Code and that it should not appear again in its current form.

This is an important reminder for promoters to keep the rules of their competitions consistent from the date the promotion opens and the rules have been published. Whilst the ASA’s rulings do not lead to a penalty, they can lead to adverse publicity and may make it harder for the advertiser to get advertising space in future.