Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and XIX Vodka Ltd (XIX)
Where: United Kingdom
When: 12 June 2024
Law stated as at: 9 July 2024
What happened:
A video seen on the third-party platform channel of Sidemen, the platform’s influencer stars, featured the group doing challenges around London. Around 16 minutes into the video, a title card repeating “SIDEMEN” and “XIX” with blue arrows appeared, accompanied by a voiceover that said things such as “we are dropping the 1.5 litre beautiful bottles of original XIX vodka.” and “look at that bottle! That’s going to bang in a club. Imagine having that on display at home.” and on-screen text such as “XIX VODKA. JUST BIGGER” and “Get yourself over to XIXVodka.com for more details.” The title card appeared again, before cutting back to the main video. Text in the video’s description said “Head here to get your maggy” with a link to the XIX website.
A complainant challenged whether the ad was likely to appeal particularly to people aged under 18, and whether it had been directed at under 18s. The ASA also challenged whether the ad was “obviously identifiable” as marketing communications.
The UK Code of Non-Broadcast Advertising and Direct and Promotional Marketing (CAP Code) provides that alcohol ads must not be likely to appeal to under 18s, particularly by associating with youth culture, alcohol ads must not be directed at under 18s through the media or context in which they appear, and marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such.
The Sidemen provided a joint response on behalf of themselves and XIX stating that their videos are aimed at over 18s, supporting this with data showing that 93% of their audience is registered as being over 18. The video in question also features clearly adult content, with an audience of 94% over 18s, and was marked as “not made for kids“, a third-party platform setting which prevents content from being recommended by the algorithm to those registered as being under 18.
They also noted that the ad was segmented by a break, similar to how ads appear on TV or in other videos on the third-party platform. They also highlighted that the title card at the start and end of the ad, the branding of the Sidemen and XIX, and the clear difference in the style in comparison to the rest of the video made it clear it was an ad.
The ASA did not uphold the first two challenges, finding that while under 18s viewers would likely recognise the influencer KSI as the voiceover in the ad, the ad itself was serious in tone and did not feature any elements, such as cartoonish characters or writing, that were likely to particularly appeal to under 18s. The supporting data was considered by the ASA to likely reflect the audience as a whole, even though this only related to users who were logged in. The wider context of the themes in the video were also not considered by the ASA to have been aimed at under 18s.
With regard to the challenge by the ASA, the ad was found to not be obviously identifiable as a marketing communication. The ASA considered that the title card only being briefly visible, and the use of the Sidemen and XIX branding, did not make it sufficiently obvious that it was an ad, and it was also not immediately clear that it was their own commercial venture that was being advertised. The ASA noted that there was nothing in the video or caption, such as #ad, to indicate it was a marketing communication.
Why this matters:
This ruling serves as yet another reminder that ads must be able to be clearly identifiable as ads regardless of the format in which they appear, with the simplest way to achieve this being the inclusion of a clear #ad disclosure within the content itself or in the caption. While the challenges relating to under 18s targeting were not upheld in this decision, it is important that age-restricted products, such as alcohol, should be advertised in a way which does not particularly appeal to viewers under 18. Advertisers should also make use of features, such as platforms’ “not made for kids” flag, which prevent adult content from being recommended to children.
