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Gambling companies Hillside (UK Sports) LP t/a Bet365 (“Bet365“), Coral Interactive (Gibraltar) Ltd (“Coral“) and Petfre (Gibraltar) Ltd (“Totesport”) were recently challenged by the UK advertising regulator, Advertising Standards Authority on using images of Jordan Spieth, US Open champion, on their Twitter feeds to promote betting.

Under the UK non-broadcast advertising industry code (the CAP Code), marketing communications (which include tweets) must be socially responsible; and must not include people aged 25 or under, or someone who appears to be so, if such person plays a “significant role” in promoting gambling and betting. An exception to this rule was introduced in 2013 for instances where an individual under the age of 25 appears in a bet directly or alongside “specific betting selections”. This is allowed so long as the image used shows them “in the context of the bet and not in a gambling context.”…

Continue Reading Gambling Companies Hit a Triple Bogey

A UK website offering reviews of accounting software that was operated by TheAccountancyPartnership.com Ltd t/a Pandle (“Pandle”) was recently challenged by Crunch Accounting Ltd (“Crunch”) on purported misleading advertising and unfair comparisons with identifiable competitors. Crunch complained to the UK advertising regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority (the “ASA”) (see:…

On May 1, 2015, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) released a set of amended Sales Promotional Rules contained in Section 8 of the CAP Code.  This follows a public consultation aimed at amending a number of rules to bring them up to date with the current consumer protection landscape.  For a list of key…

The ASA has upheld a complaint concerning a Christmas card which was offered for sale through the Amazon market place by the seller named smellyourmum.com. The front of the card contained wording incorporating a strong expletive which, although partly obscured using an asterisk, the ASA considered was likely to cause serious and widespread offence in…

The wait is finally over… Hot on the heels of yesterday’s launch of product placement onto UK television, today marks another dawn of a new age in UK advertising. As of today, Tuesday 1st March 2011, the regulatory remit of the ASA is extended to cover online non-paid for space and pages under the control…

 Advertisers have been given the green light to continue to use the name of products they give away as prizes in promotions, without needing the permission of the brand/product owner, following a recent controversial adjudication by the ASA.

The ASA disagreed and found in favour of Bodyform in all respects. Clauses 7.1 (Truthfulness),14.7 (Testimonials and…

In the same week that the Pope visited the UK, the ASA banned an ad it deemed could be offensive to some Roman Catholics.  The ad, for Antonio Federici ice-cream, which ran in Grazia and The Lady magazines  earlier this year, featured an obviously pregnant nun eating Antonio Federici ice-cream alongside the words “Immaculately conceived”.…