With Milano Cortina 2026 just days away, sharpen-up your compliance skates and ensure your ads (bob)slay without overstepping the mark.
Two for the price of one
That’s right people, it’s that time where we all get excited about the prospect of seeing not one, but two men go down on a flimsy sheet of fibreglass, as fast as they can, in Lycra. We don’t have to say the name of the event for you to know what it is. And the ASA considered the same applied in a YouTube and TV ad regarding the claim "two for the price of one on prescription glasses? Nah. It's 10 for the price of 1 at Select Specs". The claim, along with imagery of glasses and a background colour that closely resembled a competitor’s shade of green, meant the ASA considered that consumers would have immediately understood the claims in the ads to be a comparison with Specsavers.
Comparisons with identifiable competitors must be verifiable, and whilst the ads did signpost consumers to a page on the Select Specs’ website, the page itself included no information regarding the comparison. I think I’d be getting more than new glasses if I witnessed ten people go down on the luge together!
Depiction of dangerous activities
Watching the ski jump or bobsleigh may give you inner drive to be the next Eddie the Eagle or Jamaican bobsleigh team, but ads that encourage dangerous driving are not to be encouraged. The ASA ruled in Twix TV and VOD ad from last year that even if some elements seem fantastical that, by placing an emphasis on the chase of one car after another (with speed inherent to that depiction), the driving featured would be dangerous and irresponsible to emulate in real life.
Go Figure – Skating
Fear & Gibson may be gunning for gold, but you should have no fear in the celebrities you use in ads for gambling. CAP’s updated Gambling and lotteries advertising: protecting under-18s Advertising Guidance gives extensive information on how advertisers can help determine if your ads are likely to be of “strong appeal” to under-18s. The guidance outlines that advertisers should take into account various factors, including an individual’s social media follower demographics. Something that may rapidly change after an appearance in a TV show targeted at children, or, perhaps, winning gold at a major world sporting event. So, before you use a celebrity in a gambling ad, go figure out if they are suitable to do so.
Gameplay footage should be an accurate depiction of the game
Nagano 98 may not have been the greatest ever computer game ever created (I disagree – vintage fun), but the advertising of it, showing players taking on 13 different Winter Olympic events, was at least an accurate representation of the game. A paid-for social media ad for the game Evony: The King’s Return, was ruled by the ASA as being misleading due to implying that the game featured mainly “puzzle solving elements”. However, the game was not primarily a puzzle game, and if other elements were not completed, players would eventually be locked out of the puzzles. Therefore, the ASA concluded that the ad did not reflect the game’s core playing experience and was therefore misleading.
If you’re looking for some gold medal advice for your Winter Olympic ads, or any other ads for that matter, feel free to contact our winning Copy Advice team.
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