ASA Adjudication on The Chord Company Ltd - Advertising Standards Authority

Hmmm.  If the Chord co has been found 'guilty' on the basis that claims for their product cannot be objectively substantiated then most other hi-fi companies will likely be vulnerable to similar complaints.  So too will other manufacturers. For example, how will BMW objectively substantiate the claim that their cars offer the 'ultimate driving experience'?

That said, I can't help but question who it was who had the motivation to complain to the ASA about Chord's ad. Another cable manufacturer perhaps? But that seems too much like 'the pot calling the kettle black'. More likely someone for whom the saying 'get a life' was invented, me thinks.

Number of complaints: one!  Ratio of complaint/satisfaction, I'd love to know how many of these cables Chord have sold. 

This is not a surprising response from ASA as Russ Andrews were found against previously by the ASA.

I wondered the same.

Interestingly it seems like a sort off wagging finger telling off with no other sanction - which is probably the least they could do when faced with an actual (but possibly mischievous) complaint.

The ASA seem to make some rulings up as they go along anyway - I recall a previous ruling on some ads that they were an "expression of the advertiser's opinion and that the claims in it were not capable of objective substantiation" so did not uphold a complaint.

I'm sure that Chord will modify their ads to make it clearer that their claims are all based on subjective listening tests, mainly conducted by satisfied customers and dealers.

I'm sure you're right about Chord modifying the wording of their ads, Don.  Don't you think, though, that ASA has rather failed to understand the particular segment of the consumers that it is seeking to protect from misleading advertising.  Who, apart from us hi-fi buffs, would be remotely interested in or likely to buy a "Chord Sarum Tuned ARAY streaming cable"?  Good grief, 99.99% of the entire UK population would probably struggle to identify what the thing is!  Had ASA properly understood that very small number of consumers who did understand what it is, and the even smaller number who might buy it, the authority might have concluded that said consumers were perfectly capable of understanding the claims in the adverts and wouldn't be mislead.  In other words, we would listen to the damn thing before buying it!  

I'm confused (not an unusual state), but surely the outcome of using any cable will be subjective?  Whilst you could measure electrical and physical properties, by what means do you objectively measure whether something sounds better?  

Some great points already made.

BMW's website says:

"We do more than design cars. We awake passion".

I assume this claim is evidence based and can be measured in a laboratory?

Keith

I think the creators of Frankenstein might have the intellectual property rights on that one.... Oh, wait a minute, Frankenstein didn't have a soul....

I have yet to see any evidence based data from Chord,  like a lot of hifi cable & other products, marketing is not much more than fancy words & brand reputation. 

Where is Chord specifications such as we see published with "commercial" ethernet cable. Without this data,  how do we know if they conform to the standards around ethernet.  Their C-Stream appears to not conform as its not 4 twisted pairs but made with miniature coax's,  so in my mind I have doubts about them,  so what about ST-A?  

We know they sound good & we buy Chord products despite no spec., so what harm in publishing the data ?  might actually set a standard for proven quality & sell more.   

Mike, do they really have 4 coaxes? If so that is appalling, I hate to think what their emissions and cross talk look like, jeez they should carry an EMI warning if that is the case. I wonder if they pass EN5022 when in use?

Simon

Mike, Simon,

I believe that C-Stream is 4xSFTP, it's the Tuned Aray cables that are 4xCoax.

For C-Stream they selected what they thought was the best sounding CAT-7 cable they could find - that's why it's so cheap compared to their other, so called 'Ethernet' cables (1/30 the price of Indigo, 1/60 the price of Sarum).

From reading the judgement, they appear to have made extremely strong and positive and definitive statements about their Ethernet cable. 

Which would appear to have been remarkably... "courageous" (in Sir Humphrey mode) 

The problem with selling an Ethernet cable costing £1600, yes 1600 pounds, is that there is a whole shedload of extremely expensive and extremely good test equipment out there that can test the efficacy of this cable passing data, far more easily than anything we can do in the analogue domain with an analogue signal.

Marketing tends to run just ahead of reality and in this instance the gap appears to have become a little too wide. There must be scores, if not more of companies in various sectors who are little more than a complaint away from a similar fate. In this respect Chord have been unlucky. But they were still peddling twaddle.

I believe the biggest problem in the Chord advert was:

"Tuned ARAY cables appear to dramatically reduce noise levels within the systems they are used in. The result of this is music with extraordinary levels of detail, dynamics and coherence"

(Also the first part is grammatically incorrect!)

This claims for dynamics and coherence are testable (and, of themselves, unlikely to be substantiated).  Most of the rest is subjective opinion.  However inclusion of an unsubstantiated statement of objective fact is contrary to the ASA rules and invalidates the entire advert.

I believe this is what has happened here.

It would be interesting to see the result of a complaint against the claim that some of their Tuned Aray cables are Ethernet cables, as there are testable standards with which they must comply (as Simon pointed out).

I'm obliged Huge, but it underscores the point about no specs,  it invites misinformation

But if the high priced cables are coax & to Simons points,   what a price for non-conformity

Huge - ok that makes more sense... but seems slightly underhand just to rebadge some one else's Cat 7 cable, but perhaps thats why I am not in marketing.

Simon

+1

Simon,

Looking at it, I think they buy the cable in bulk and stick their own termination on it.

The trouble with the ASA is that they have no technical knowledge. They have just found in favour of BT with their "Fibre Broadband" ads. What BT are delivering is nothing of the sort, it may well have fibre to a street cabinet, but still delivered over crappy copper to the house.

Also the small new providers which are delivering true Fibre to the premises (FTTP) still have to use the wording "up to xx Mbit/sec". The the FTTP technology does deliver a guaranteed speed, unlike BT over copper, where the speed achievable is dependant on the quality of line and distance.

Chord  made the claim that their cables sound better. If this claim was true,  it would have been trivial for them to demonstrate that they (or anyone) could hear the difference between their cables and a standard cable under blind conditions. But they couldn't. So evidently they themselves can't hear the difference, and they can't find anyone else who can either. The ASA code isn't particulalry demanding, it just sets a baseline that adverts should be "legal, decent, honest and truthful", and that marketers "must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation." Evidently Chord had no such evidence to present. IMO the judgment is absolutely justified. It will be interesting to how widely this judgment is reported in the hifi press - particularly by those magazines that take advertising from Chord.

Have you read the ruling? They presented video evidence and trade press reviews

All this fuss over a single complaint by one grumpy old man who went apoplectic over a cable costing more than he felt reasonable. Who gives a toss? 

Chord make cables (actually my understanding is that they terminate cables that are manufactured by a variety of different companies, to a variety of different specifications) at a whole range of price points and surely have a cable that suits most applications at a price most would feel affordable.

They also, thank God, try to push the boundaries and produce the best cables that they possibly can, money no object. A statement, if you will. No one is forced to buy them, they freely admit that they are horrendously expensive but they also have learnt from the experience and incorporate that learning into their "lesser" products available at significantly lower prices, products that, as far as I can see, no one has criticised.

So why the indignation? Get over it.

Yes I have read the ruling. Have you got or can you point me to any documentary evidence, as required by the code, that supports the claims made? For example, a claim was made of lower noise. This is objective, and measurable. Where are the measurements? The video "evidence" was of a sighted dem organised by Chord. Not at all acceptable. If they could repeat that unsiqhted, there would be no problem. Why couldn't they? Even with their own personnel? Is there no-one at Chord who can hear the difference these cables make under unsighted conditions?