BrewDog boss James Watt has hit back at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for banning an Instagram advert in which the brewery claimed its beers are climate negative.
The ad itself – which featured a child’s drawing of the earth of fire and called on beer drinkers to ‘drink it for me’, with the tagline ‘beer for your grandchildren’ – featured in a number of different formats. Only the Instagram ad has been banned.
In response to the ban, Watt said that BrewDog had met the ASA’s criteria for making the claim, adding that the brand is fully certified as carbon negative by Positive Planet.
“If you’re just skimming, you’ll probably think we’ve been told we can no longer claim our beers are carbon negative,” he said.
“So let me set the record straight now – before any misinterpretation takes hold – the ASA doesn’t have a problem with us claiming our beers are carbon negative.”
Subscribe to Marketing Beat for free
Sign up here to get the latest marketing campaigns sent straight to your inbox each morning
However, the ASA had received two complainants about the social media ad, saying it was potentially misleading because it failed to clarify the basis of the carbon negative claim.
Brewdog responded by highlighting that as Instagram does not allow links within image captions, they had directed consumers to their ‘bio’, which linked to a webpage detailing the basis of the claim in full – that carbon avoided or removed from the atmosphere due to their investment in nature-based projects was greater than the carbon emitted in making the beer.
It also added that linking in this way is a standard practice which consumers are used to due to Instagram’s space and functionality constraints.
Despite this, the ASA upheld the complaint and said the post was misleading, banning the ad and ruling that BrewDog must “ensure the basis of environmental claims was clear” in future ads.
It said that while the ad referred consumers to the BrewDog website which contained further information about their carbon reduction and offsetting projects, the ad itself did not include information which explained the basis of the claim.
As part of its wider anti-greenwashing efforts, CAP Guidance states that advertisers should avoid using unqualified carbon neutral claims, as “unqualified claims could mislead if material information was omitted”.
The ASA did not consider the link to more information or the inclusion of the Planet Positive logo to be sufficient in “making the basis of the environmental claim clear”.
“Two people complained and the ASA upheld the complaint. That’s it,” said Watt.
“You can all sleep more soundly now, knowing that the ASA is protecting you from insufficiently extensive carbon accounting data in your Insta feed.”
