Ad description

A website, www.expertminds.co.uk, offering mental health and wellbeing services featured an image of a consultant clinical psychologist who worked at the clinic. It also included their title and surname on the “THE TEAM” web page. Upon clicking on the image, consumers were directed to the psychologist’s profile, which included some background information regarding their career history and training.

Issue

The complainant, Dr Awenat (a consultant clinical psychologist), whose image and details appeared in the ad, challenged whether the ad was misleading because she no longer worked at the advertised clinic, but ran her own mental health and wellbeing service.

Response

Expert Minds Ltd acknowledged the complaint, but did not submit a substantive response to the ASA’s enquiries.

Assessment

The ASA was concerned by Expert Minds lack of substantive response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). We reminded them of their responsibility to provide a substantive response to our enquiries and told them to do so in the future.

Upheld

We understood that Dr Awenat was no longer associated with the Expert Minds clinic and had directly requested for her image and information to be removed from the website (www.expertminds.co.uk). However, Expert Minds continued to show her image and career details on the “THE TEAM” page of their website.

Therefore, because Dr Awenat no longer worked at the Expert Minds clinic, but her details were still appearing on the www.expertminds.co.uk website, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule  3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.  

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Expert Minds Ltd that their advertising must not feature profiles of staff members who have left the organisation.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1    


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