ā¦ do your homework
Making sure you comply with the rules for your advertising is not always straightforward, especially when it comes to age restricted products.
Take Ladbrokes for example.
Iāve written about their previous brushes with the ASA over their advertising.
You may remember the rules on using sports men and women were updated in October last year to avoid ads for gambling having strong appeal to the under 18s.
Ladbrokes has featured in the ASA’s spotlight again and again this year.
First with football players, then a boxer, then football managers and now tennis players.
So, just before the Australian Open kicked off in January, Ladbrokes sent out four tweets.
They featured 4 top players, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas, asking various questions about who was likely to lift the trophy.
Ladbrokes did some homework, checking the social media following of each player, which showed hardly anyone was under 21, especially on Twitter.
They also reviewed the playersā sponsorships deals (Novakās include Peugeot, Hublot and ANZ bank) and these indicated an adult audience.
The ASA did their own detective work.
– all 4 players had been in Grand Slam finals last year.
– Novak and Rafael. Tennis legends for over 10 years and considered 2 of the best and most successful players, both have been No. 1 in the world, and they shared the record for most major titles won.
– Nick reached the final of Wimbledon and Stefanos the final of the Australian Open last year, tournaments that received high media coverage and would therefore be of interest to under 18s.
The ASAās verdict – both players were high risk when it comes to gambling adverts, despite their apparent social media following.
If Ladbrokes could guarantee under 18s couldnāt see the ads, then ok, but as we know, using social media, and especially Twitter, which allow users to self-verify, will always leave a risk that children will see them.
Luckily for Ladbrokes, the ASA canāt fine you, but appearing on their website as an upheld complaint for the 4th time is not going to help their reputation.
This does show that thinking more widely about who you use in your ads, and not just focusing on figures, could avoid an appearance before the regulator.