Watchdog rules Pippa O’Connor's 'misleading' Instagram story was not labelled correctly
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Ireland’s advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint made against Pippa O’Connor over the labelling of an Instagram story promoting her own beauty products.
This complaint is one of 16 upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in its latest bulletin, which again features multiple complaints made against social media influencers over the labelling of their content online as advertisements.
In the case of Ms O’Connor, who recently launched a new beauty brand Poco Beauty, a complaint was made to the watchdog about a story on her Instagram account that featured some of these products.
“One image from the story included the label ‘Own Brand’ in the top right-hand corner,” the regulator said. “Other images from the story included the company tag ‘@pocobeautyofficial’ in the bottom left-hand corner.
“The complainant did not consider that the story images had been identified correctly as advertising material. They said that while one image had included the label ‘Own Brand’, it had not contained the primary identification label ‘#Ad’.
“They said that none of the other images had been identified as advertising material, and therefore, viewers may not have been aware that what they were viewing was (1) advertising material or (2) that the Influencer was the owner of the brand.”
The ASA said the complaint considered that it was “very misleading and frustrating” when social media posts which were marketing communications were “not identified correctly”.
The watchdog said that, in response, the company said they considered Ms O’Connor to be “one of Ireland’s best known faces online and by engaging with any of their content — particularly over the past year — viewers would be aware they were the owner of the Poco Beauty brand”.
It was also suggested that it would be a “stretch” to say that it was misleading to not label some stories/posts with the “own brand” label.
“The advertisers said they felt very passionate about the guidance, but the fact that they can’t use their own profile, without restriction, to promote Poco Beauty which is an integral part of their personal brand is, in their view, verging on being anti-competitive,” the ASA said.
The ASA upheld the complaint, saying that the code requires that advertising content should have one of the three “primary labels” as a disclosure, namely putting a “#AD”, “#Gifted” or a platform provided tool on such posts.
As the content did not have such a label and was not "correctly identified" as advertising, it was "likely to mislead consumers about the nature of the content".
Other complaints upheld by the ASA in its latest bulletin included posts promoting the alcohol drink Four Loco, a private south Dublin school and a betting firm.