The Advertising Standards Authority has banned an Instagram post by footballer Rio Ferdinand which promoted the Visit Qatar website.
The video, seen on December 21, 2022, was captioned: “Time spent eating my bodyweight in the kitchen! That’s a wrap for Qatar, been great filming behind the scenes and meeting so many locals!”
The text underneath stated “#VisitQatar” and below that “#ad”.
When viewing the post on a mobile device, the hashtags were not visible and a user would have had to click on a “more” button to view them.
A complainant challenged whether the post was obviously identifiable as a marketing communication – and the ASA agreed as the ad “did not make clear upfront its commercial intent”.
“We understood that Rio Ferdinand had a commercial relationship with Visit Qatar in which he had been paid to promote the tourism industry of the country using his Instagram account,” said the ASA in its ruling.
As it breached ASA rules, the ad cannot appear again in that form, said the watchdog.
The ASA told Qatar Tourism – trading as Visit Qatar – and Rio Ferdinand to ensure that their future ads were obviously identifiable as marketing communications with clear identifiers such as “#ad”.
In its response to the ASA, Qatar Tourism acknowledged that the presentation of the label was not prominent enough.
It informed the ASA that it had liaised with Ferdinand’s representatives and that the post had been amended to make the label clearer.
Furthermore, it said would ensure that all future marketing communication posts would be more prominently labelled.
Ferdinand’s representative said they believed that all guidelines had been followed as the post included a #ad label.
Picture of Rio Ferdinand by Cosmin Iftode/Shutterstock.com