Autocontrol, the independent self-regulatory body of the advertising industry, has dismissed in its entirety a claim filed by Iberdrola against Repsol on January 19 in which the company chaired by Ignacio Galán questioned the veracity of the advertising issued by Repsol in relation to the new fuels. In addition, it imposes the payment of any fees that may eventually accrue to Autocontrol, for the processing of this procedure, in accordance with the current rates.”
Specifically, Iberdrola filed a complaint based on four statements. The first was that the advertising was misleading “by extending the “100% renewable” characteristic to the entire Repsol company and to all the products it markets and not only to its new fuels.”
The second is that the content of this advertising “does not detail compliance with the sustainability criteria of the RED Renewable Directive and, for this reason, it could mislead the consumer by not being able to verify whether the promoted products are 100% renewable.”
Furthermore, Iberdrola questioned whether the advertising complied with the principle of truthfulness because, as it explained in its complaint, “the promoted fuels cannot be used in all vehicles and because “it would be omitting that the results that the consumer will obtain from the use of this type of renewable fuels differ greatly from the results with a traditional fuel.”
After analyzing the documentation and examples of the reported advertising provided by Iberdrola, Autocontrol dismissed all the points reported by Iberdrola. “It is not possible to accept that an average consumer, normally informed and reasonably attentive and discerning, could associate the claim “Repsol quality, now 100% renewable” with any Repsol feature, product or service that was not specifically the promoted fuels, since There is no element that allows this “renewable” characteristic to be associated with other products or elements of the advertising company,” the analysis concludes.
Regarding the fact that all advertising could confuse the consumer by making them believe that all Repsol fuels are 100% renewable, Autocontrol says: “For an average consumer who is normally informed and reasonably attentive and discerning, this mention clearly conveys The message is unequivocal according to which a new category of fuels is being promoted, which can be found along with the traditional ones of fossil origin, and which are currently not available in all Repsol service stations, but only in fifty. It does not seem likely that a consumer with those characteristics would then conclude that currently all Repsol fuels are 100% renewable, since that would mean admitting that outside of the fifty Repsol service stations that currently have renewable fuels, the remaining service stations “They do not sell fuel.”
The complaint to the advertising body has not been the only one nor the most powerful of those that Iberdrola has deployed. The electricity company went much further in March, when it filed a lawsuit before the Commercial Court of Santander in which it accused Repsol of unfair competition and also of misleading advertising for those same advertising campaigns. The ordinary justice system has not yet ruled on the case.
