Au Vodka ads banned for targeting underage teenagers

TikTok and Facebook posts for a brand of vodka have been banned for targeting underage teenagers, the regulator has said.

A TikTok post by social media influencer Lucinda Strafford in June showed her filling a large gold-coloured vending machine which featured the Au Vodka logo with cans of Au Vodka Juicy Peach, before she took a sip from one of the cans and said: “That is so good.”

Accompanying text read “an actual DREAM OMG [hearts emoji] [peach emoji] unlimited Juicy Peach cans [smiling face with tears emoji] & I can keep it?! @Au Vodka ad”.

A paid-for Facebook post in June showed a video of influencer Kai Cenat opening a box containing a bottle of Au Vodka and drinking, before accompanying text read: “Haven’t Tried Au Vodka Yet? Secure The Taste Of The Summer, Au Vodka Juicy Peach [peach emoji] Essences of summer in every sip. [palm tree emoji] Shop Now Pay Later Available [credit card emoji].”

Another Facebook post in April showed a woman saying “you need to try this” before she held a bottle of Au Vodka Juicy Peach to the camera.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received one complaint that the first ad was inappropriately targeted at people under 18 years of age and the second and third ads featured someone who was, or seemed to be, under 25 years of age.

Au Vodka told the ASA that Strafford was a well-known reality personality from the TV series Love Island and over the age of 25.

They provided a screenshot of her audience demographics on TikTok, which they believed demonstrated that all of her followers were aged 18 or over.

They stated the ad was designed for a general adult audience and did not contain any themes or visual elements that were likely to be of particular appeal to under 18s.

Strafford’s management agency provided the same screenshot which showed a breakdown of her followers on TikTok by age group.

Au Vodka said the second ad had location targeting applied to deliver it to audiences in the US.

While it may have been possible that a small number of individuals based in the UK would have seen the post, those situations were rare and fell outside of their intended paid-for targeting strategy.

They acknowledged that Cenat was 23 years old, but stated that this was compliant with advertising laws in the US, where they had intended the ad to be seen.

Au Vodka acknowledged that the individual featured in the third ad was 24 years old at the time the ad appeared and was therefore in breach of advertising regulations.

They stated her inclusion in the ad was an oversight, and that they had taken steps to enforce stricter checks in future.

Under UK advertising rules, ads for alcoholic drinks or ads that featured or referred to alcoholic drinks must not be directed at people under 18 years of age, and no media should be used to advertise alcoholic drinks if more than 25% of the audience is under 18 years of age.

Further, people shown drinking or playing a significant role in ads for alcoholic drinks must not be, or seem to be, under 25 years of age.

The ASA said it therefore expected to see evidence that Au Vodka had taken appropriate steps to limit the likelihood of children or young people seeing their ads.

Noting that the minimum age required to create a TikTok account was 13, the ASA said that the screenshot of Strafford’s followers did not include data for any followers aged between 13 and 17.

The ASA said: “Because the proportion of under-18s who followed Ms Strafford’s account was not included, we could not take the data about her followers into account and therefore could not be certain of the proportion of her followers who were under 18.”

It added: “We considered overall that the (Love Island) TV series was popular with young people, including under 18s, and that a number of individuals who were under the age of 18 with TikTok accounts were therefore likely to interact with content related to Love Island on the platform.

“Even if those individuals did not follow Ms Strafford, we considered it was likely that the algorithm would determine her posts to be of interest to them, meaning they would appear in their ‘For You’ page.”

The ASA ruled: “In the absence of specific targeting tools and relevant demographic data being provided, and in view of the way in which users engaged with TikTok, we concluded that insufficient care had been taken to ensure that ad (a) was not directed at people under the age of 18. It therefore breached the code.”

In relation to the second and third ads, the ASA found that Cenat’s age of 23 and the woman’s age of 24 meant those ads had also broken the rules.

The ASA said: “The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told Au Vodka Ltd to ensure that their future ads were appropriately targeted and were not directed at people under 18 years of age.

“We also told them to ensure their ads did not feature individuals who were, or appeared to be, under 25 years of age.”