Celebrity Twitter adverts cleared by ASA
The Advertising Standards Authority has cleared a Twitter advertising campaign involving soccer star Rio Ferdinand and model Katie Price of being misleading.
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The judgement is the first delivered by the authority on advertisements delivered via Twitter.
Two complaints had been made that it was not obvious the tweets in question - paid for by the confectionary firm Mars - were advertisements.
The ASA dismissed the complaints, and noted that the final tweet of the paid sequence ended with the hashtag #snickersuk.
Sent in January, the ads consisted of a series of four tweets which were out of character for the celeb in question - followed by a fifth reading "You're not you when you're hungry @snickersUk #hungry #spon" - accompanied with a picture of the celeb opening a Snickers bar.
Rio's "out of character" tweets involved knitting while Katie's concerned macro-economics.
The ASA's conclusion read: "We considered the combination of those elements was sufficient to make clear the tweets were advertising and that consumers would then understand each series of tweets was a marketing communication."
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