Advert banned for inflated sofas

Viewers said the adverts made the sofas look too big

An advertisement for the furniture retailer DFS has been banned for making its sofas look too big.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 21 complaints from viewers about the advert.

DFS admitted to using green screen technology to superimpose actors into domestic settings to imitate a music video of Rockstar by Nickleback.

It said it had not tried to make the sofas look bigger and that people tend to visit a store before buying a sofa.

In a statement, it added that many customers' main concern was whether a sofa would fit in their house or flat and so showing the sofas bigger than they really were would have been a deterrent to sales.

The ASA asked for evidence of the size of the sofas in the adverts, but DFS was unable to provide any because the promotional period had finished and that there were none left in stock.

It concluded that although DFS had not intended to exaggerate the size of its sofas, "some of the sofas did appear large in relation to the actors".