High School Girls Reveal Truth of Misleading Advertisements

News Source: (Reuters)

Ribena Juice Maker Is Squeezed Dry After High School Girl Evaluation

Ribena, one of the world's best known fruit juices were fined by a New Zealand court after two high school girls exposed the makers for misleading consumers over vitamin C levels in their Ribena blackcurrant drink.

Sorry, but I just love this story and just have to repeat the collness that it was two high school girls that made the discovery. Ok…moving on.

High school students Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo in 2004 tested the drink against advertising claims that "the blackcurrants in Ribena had four times the vitamin C of oranges." Instead, the pair found the syrup-based drink contained almost no trace of vitamin C.

Ribena Juice made by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) didn’t pay any attention to the results found by Devathasan and Suo until their complaints reached the New Zealand's consumer watchdog Commerce Commission. However, not too long afterwards, the company appeared in an Auckland court on 15 charges of breaching the New Zealand's Fair Trading Act, GSK pleaded guilty and admitted its ads may have left consumers with a wrong impression of the health benefits of Ribena.

The judge fined the company a total $163,700 for misleading advertising.

The Commerce Commission said GSK's behavior was a "massive" breach of trust with the New Zealand public.

"As a multinational company specializing in pharmaceuticals and health products, they should have had robust testing and quality assurance systems in place to ensure its product was delivering what it promised," Commission chair Paula Rebstock said in a statement.

GSK told the court it had not deliberately set out to mislead consumers, and the fault lay with its testing methods.

"The fact that some of our products had incorrect labeling is to us, unacceptable, and we sincerely regret any confusion caused to customers who feel they may have been misled," GSK said in a statement.

The court also ordered the company to place advertisements in major metropolitan New Zealand newspapers to correct its mistakes.

"We're just blown away that anything we could have started as a consumer could have blown up into something so huge," Devathasan told Radio New Zealand.

Congratulations to Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo for work well done!

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