Ad description
A tweet from the Tennent's Lager Twitter account, seen on 18 June 2016, stated "Today's outlook" and was accompanied by a graphic which showed a five-day weather forecast. For Wednesday, it showed the forecast weather at hourly intervals from 2 pm till 4 am, with forecasted temperatures and weather icons. Between 5 pm and 9 pm, the weather icon was replaced with the Tennent's 'T'.
Issue
The Youth Alcohol Advertising Council challenged whether the ad encouraged the excessive consumption of alcohol.
Response
Tennent Caledonian Breweries UK Ltd said the tweet was visible to their followers over the age of 18 years, who understood the tone and humour used by them in their feed.
Tennent said the ad celebrated what they believed to be a somewhat rare occurrence of a spell of good weather in Scotland. They said it parodied a traditional weather forecast by replacing the ‘sunny’ icon with the Tennent’s logo between the hours of 5 pm and 9 pm. They added further, that the tweet was intended as a joke to suggest that people in Scotland might actually be able to enjoy a post-work drink in the sunshine. They noted that contrasted with the weather forecast for the remainder of the week, which was shown as being for cloudy weather.
Tennent believed the ad did not encourage excessive drinking and said there was no intention to encourage people to drink alcohol for all of that period. They said the ad did not include a call to action that encouraged people to drink alcohol, made no mention or reference to the consumption of alcohol, had no images of any alcoholic drink nor images of anyone consuming alcohol. For those reasons, they believed the ad did not breach the Code.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA noted that the ad did not include any images of alcohol being consumed or any explicit reference to drinking over an extended period. We noted that the Tennent’s logo appeared continuously in the weather report between 5 pm and 9 pm, but considered that this would be seen as an indication of an interval during which consumers might enjoy a drink and take advantage of a welcome sunny evening. We did not consider that it would be seen as suggesting that consumers might or should drink solidly for the whole period and concluded that the ad did not encourage excessive drinking.
We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 18.1 18.1 Marketing communications must be socially responsible and must contain nothing that is likely to lead people to adopt styles of drinking that are unwise. For example, they should not encourage excessive drinking. Care should be taken not to exploit the young, the immature or those who are mentally or socially vulnerable. (Alcohol), but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
