Claims by cosmetics firm Avon that they do not test their products on animals have been exposed as lies by animal welfare group Uncaged.

The false claims were made by Avon to better market its products. It stated on its UK website “Avon do not test products or ingredients on animals, nor do we request others to do so on our behalf” However on its global website it makes it clear that it still carries out toxicity testing of new cosmetic chemicals on animals because this allows it to innovate and maximise its profits, a very different story to the one its UK customers are being told.

An ad from the Royal Bank of Scotland which claimed it would never close a branch if it was the last one in town has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for being misleading.

The adjudication was made after the ASA was told about an RBS bank, the Natwest in Farsley, Yorks, which was the last bank there and which was recently closed by RBS to save money.

It has been estimated that 1500 high street bank branches will close in the next six years

Call centres beloved of some marketeers are being targeted by a new phone app that only puts its users through to the call dialled when someone at the other end answers.

This aspect, claim the inventors of WeQ4U saves around 30 pence per minute and around 45 hours a year waiting on phones. The firm is currently drawing up a blacklist of companies with the longest waiting times for their call centres.

The Advertising Standards Authority is probing a stunt by Mars to promote its Snickers bar on Twitter.

Reportedly Mars paid Rio Ferdinand, Ian Botham, Katie Price and Amir Khan to post images of themselves with Snickers bars on the social networking site to coincide with a TV ad campaign.

Another moral compass is needed, it seems, for former London mayor Ken Livingstone.

Our Ken, who has described tax avoiders as “rich bastards” who “don’t get it” apparently had fees for his media work while he was mayor paid to his private company, Silverta Ltd, for the purposes of, er, tax avoidance. It is ,of course, something of a PR disaster when someone is hoisted with their own petard.

Claims that Silverta is short for a silver-tongued unmentionable, are, like Mr Livingstone perhaps, not to be trusted………..

News that Barkers, makers of dog food has screened a TV ad with a high frequency sound that only canines can hear has been met with some scepticism. After all if humans can’t hear it how can anyone know it has gone out, unless they have dog that barked at the screen at the appropriate moment, of course. Or was it just a cunning stunt to generate some publicity?

Meanwhile a rumour that the secret sound was a message to dogs to bite their owners if they didn’t buy them Barkers should, in our view, be treated as just silly.

Meanwhile an ad by furniture firm Sofa King which stated that its prices were “Sofa King Low” has been banned by the ASA for being offensive.

The ad appeared in the Northampton Herald and Post, who told the ASA that they had received two complaints about the slogan, and that Sofa King used it on their shop front and on their vehicles. Sofa King stated that they had been delighting their target market with it for nine years.