Drinks giant Diageo has pulled an advert for Captain Morgan’s rum from popular social media app Snapchat amid concerns over age verification and following a ruling from the UK Advertising Standards Agency which says the ad breached rules.

An ASA ruling on Diageo says that two issues were investigated, both of which were upheld. Diageo has been ordered not to push the ad campaign in its current form on Snapchat.

“We told Captain Morgan to ensure their ads were appropriately targeted in the future and that they were not of particular appeal to under 18s,” says the ASA ruling.

Diageo has responded by claiming that it took steps to make sure the Snapchat ad was not directed towards minors.

“We took all reasonable steps to ensure the content we put on Snapchat was not directed at under 18s – using the data provided to us by Snapchat and applying an age filter.”

“We have now stopped all advertising on Snapchat globally while we assess the incremental age verification safeguards that Snapchat are implementing.”

“We are disappointed with the ASA’s decision. While more options for age targeting on Snapchat have been added since July, we disagree that Diageo intentionally directed its Lens to an underage audience when it applied the accurate 18+ targeting available at the time.

"The ASA acknowledges the evidence we provided showing that ages supplied by Snapchatters are a robust way to age-restrict ads. Snapchat now offers amongst the most sophisticated targeting in the industry and by introducing new tools such as Audience Lenses and incorporating additional signals into our targeting, advertisers have a reliable and flexible way to ensure their ads reach the right audience.”

What is the problem with the Snapchat ad?
Snapchat uses face lenses which can turn a user’s face into something new such as an icon, emoji and so on. It is a highly popular image messaging and multimedia mobile application amongst tweens and teenagers globally, however, the majority of its users are aged over 18.

The ad campaign which ran last June is described as: “A Snapchat lens advertising Captain Morgan, seen in June 2017, included a cartoon icon of a pirate. The lens, which made the user’s face looks like Captain Morgan, featured two glasses of a mixed alcoholic drink clinking together on screen, a seagull that flew a scroll on to the screen, which said 'Live like the Captain,' a voice-over that said 'Captain' and the sound of people cheering.”

The ASA challenged whether the lense was “of particular appeal to people under 18” and, secondly, whether it was directed at those under the legal drinking age.

On both points, Diageo said that the image of Captain Morgan was consistent with the brand trademark and packaging that depicted a historical buccaneer in traditional seventeenth-century attire. The company pointed out that the ad did not use bright, loud or artificial colors that would be of particular appeal to people under the age of 18.

Further, the Captain Morgan lens aimed to depict a real-life seventeenth-century buccaneer and was complemented with the use of toasting tankards and the scroll, highlighting the era and ambiance which a Snapchat user could create. The lens was intended to be light-hearted, it said.

Social media content and age safeguards
Captain Morgan also said that they ensured all marketing communications which appeared on social media platforms only appeared on those where a minimum of 75 percent of the audience was aged 18 years and above. Demographic data provided to Captain Morgan by Snap Inc. showed that in 2016, 77 percent of UK Snapchat users were registered as aged 18 years or over.

The Captain Morgan lens used age-gated targeting to ensure that the lens was only delivered to users with a registered age of 18 years and over. The lens was neither directed at nor made available in the lens carousel to users under the age of 18.

Snap Inc said in the UK they only directed alcohol advertising to users who provided a date of birth which showed them to be over 18 and that at the time the lens ran, they could only target lenses by age and geolocation.

Furthermore, they said that they were confident in the reliability and sufficiency of the ages supplied to them during the sign-up process. They provided first- and third-party data evidencing the reliability of those supplied ages to effect robust age targeting. They provided data which evidenced that the practical impact of targeting using interest-based factors rather than those supplied ages would be limited.

They also provided confidential data relating to the breakdown of their UK audience by age group. They said they had since launched Audience Lenses, which could be targeted to a specific audience using demographics like age and gender, as well as to users identified as falling into one of Snapchat’s “Lifestyle Categories” based on the user’s interests as demonstrated by activity in other sections in the app.