Advertising watchdog bans innocent ad over ‘misleading’ environmental claims

An advert for Coca-Cola-owned drinks brand innocent has been banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) watchdog for ‘greenwashing’ and providing ‘misleading’ environmental claims. 

The advert featured an animated otter singing encouraging lyrics like “get fixing up the planet,” suggesting this could be achieved by purchasing innocent’s drinks.

A spokesperson for innocent told FoodBev: “We’re disappointed to see the ruling from the ASA. Our advert was always intended to highlight important global environmental issues and the need for collective action to make a change. We transparently share more about the work that we do on sustainability on our website.”

“As with any new guidelines, we’d like to work with the ASA and other brands to understand how to align to them to continue the conversation on these important topics.”

You might have spotted that our ad has been in the news today. Here’s a few thoughts from us on what’s been going down. pic.twitter.com/qY7THXsoRP

— innocent drinks (@innocent) February 23, 2022

ASA ruled that “there was no suggestion in the ad through statements or imagery that purchasing innocent products themselves would lead to a positive environmental impact”.

The ad was brought to ASA’s attention after 26 viewers, including a member of the environmental group Plastics Rebellion, claimed that the advert ‘misled’ customers by exaggerating the “total environmental benefits” of innocent’s products.

With ASA upholding the ruling, the watchdog also acknowledged that “some consumers would interpret the ad simply to mean that innocent had made an aspirational commitment to doing their part to do better for the environment, or that the ad was a call to action for everyone more generally to do better for the planet”.

However, ASA also commented: “Because we considered that the ads would be understood to mean that innocent was environmentally friendly and that purchasing their products had environmental benefits, we needed to see evidence that was the case. Although we acknowledged that innocent was undertaking various actions, which were aimed at reducing the environmental impact of their products, that did not demonstrate that their products had a net positive environmental impact over their full lifecycles.”

The ASA also noted that innocent’s drinks bottles included non-recycled plastic and that the extraction of raw materials and subsequent processing in order to produce the bottle would have a negative impact on the environment.