Pippa O'Connor pulled up over 'misleading' Instagram posts following complaint

Influencer Pippa O'Connor has been pulled up by the Advertising Standards Authority over Instagram posts about her own beauty brand.

The Kildare model and businesswoman was the subject of a complaint after posting videos on her own @pipsy_pie accounts about the POCO beauty brand. It was alleged and later upheld that the posts did not contain the correct labels to clearly flag them as advertising. 

The Advertising Standards Authority said that "advertising published on the Influencer’s Instagram account as a story featured some of the products from their own beauty range. One image from the story included the label ‘Own Brand’ in the top right-hand corner. Other images from the story included the company tag ‘@pocobeautyofficial’ in the bottom left-hand corner."

However, a complaint lodged against the posts claimed "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 advertising material or that the Influencer was the owner of the brand."

The complainant suggested the posts were there "very misleading and frustrating when social media posts which were marketing communications were not identified correctly."

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In response, the advertisers [POCO] said they considered the owner of the Company 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."

They considered it "may be a stretch to say that 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."

In conclusion, they said the owner of the brand had very largely been compliant over the past number of years with ASA guidelines, but they have been advised to be more vigilant in the future regarding posts and stories relating to their own brand.

The authority upheld the complaint and said in its conclusion: "The Complaints Committee considered the detail of the complaint, and the response received.

"The Committee noted the Code requirements that marketing communications should be clear that they are marketing communications (3.31) and should not misrepresent their true purpose such as being presented as user-generated content (3.32).

"They also noted the joint guidance published by the Advertising Standards Authority and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) on disclosing advertising content, which provided that advertising content should have one of three primary labels as a disclosure; #AD, a platform provided tool or #Gifted.

"They also noted that in addition to the primary label #AD, there were several secondary advertisement labels that could be used in addition to and following the primary label as in this case #OwnBrand. The Committee noted individuals were not precluded from promoting their own products on their own profile but for the purposes of the Code, this was commercial marketing communications and in the interests of consumers, such material should be disclosed as such.

"The Committee noted that the advertising content had not included a primary identification label, and therefore had not been correctly identified as advertising material, and as such, likely to mislead consumers about the nature of the content. The Committee concluded that the advertisements were in breach of Sections 3.31, 3.32, 4.1, and 4.4 of the Code."