Rio Ferdinand has had two Twitter posts for PlayStation banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for failing to clearly label the tweets as ads.
The tweets saw the ex-England and Manchester United football star promote ‘PlayStation House’ ahead of the Champions League final earlier this year.
A complainant contacted the ASA to challenge whether the tweets were ‘obviously identifiable’ as marketing communications.
Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Ltd responded to the complaint by detailing that internal advertising guidelines are consistently supplied to the influencers they work with. Including ‘#ad’ in social media posts is the main guideline proposed to the stars Sony collaborates with.
Despite the fact that the tech firm admitted that the hashtag ‘PlayStationPartners’ was incorrectly included as a disclosure for Rio Ferdinand’s tweets, Sony believed that the ads were clearly marketing communications and therefore did not mislead consumers, irrespective of the hashtag used.
Rio Ferdinand’s representatives also told the advertising watchdog that they were willing to remove the posts in question if required.
Nevertheless, the ASA concluded that the language used in the Twitter posts was not sufficiently clear to ensure that the posts were obviously identifiable as ads.
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“We did not consider that tagging the posts with “#PlayStationPartners” or “PlayStationHouse” amounted to a clear acknowledgment of the commercial relationship between Mr Ferdinand and Sony, which would be immediately understandable to a consumer,” the ad authority added.
“We also considered that while the ads may have featured prominent logos and set dressing relating to Sony products and the UEFA Champions League, those elements were only relevant to the existing and well-known relationship between Sony and UEFA, and did not make clear the commercial relationship between Sony and Mr Ferdinand, which we did not believe the average consumer would be aware of.
“The ads must not appear again in the form complained about.
“We told Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Ltd and Rio Ferdinand to ensure that in future their ads were obviously identifiable as marketing communications and made clear upfront their commercial intent, for example, by including a clear and prominent identifier such as “#ad”.
