ASA rules against J&J over lens comfort claim

The Advertising Standards Authority has told Johnson & Johnson not to imply in its advertising that its 1 Day Acuvue product was more comfortable than all other daily disposable contact lenses unless it had robust evidence to substantiate that claim.

It further ordered the removal of two bar charts headed 'Significantly superior comfort than Focus Dailies with AquaComfort' from future advertising.

The ASA ruling comes in response to complaints made by CIBA Vision about a J&J advertisement that appeared in Optician early last year. CIBA said its own research showed its Focus Daily lens to be more comfortable than the 1 Day Acuvue product. CIBA took issue with the advert on two points - the claim 'Are you fitting the most comfortable contact lenses?' in conjunction with the 'good', 'better' and 'best' claims in a column headed 'Daily disposables' and two bar charts headed 'Significantly superior comfort than Focus Dailies with AquaComfort'.