Aren't online adverts supposed to be "truthful" under ASA guidelines? (and... the law)

Myranda

Currently on Facebook a page calling itself "Health Life Magazine" which decided to pop up in my Facebook feed.

Now I've gotten used to seeing the adverts for "miracle food secrets" that "melt fat" normally advertising Acai berries which have been proven to not have the claimed effect. So for an advertising campaign to annoy me would take a fair bit...

Well recently they've stepped up their game and rather than an obnoxious but insignificant ad on the right of the screen they've been directly invading my feed. Now I'd ignored them till today...

"Bristol Mum Loses 2 stone in 4 weeks" has been the regular appearing headline...

Only this week the "Bristol Mum" was none other than American, Jennifer Lover Hewitt.

Not only is the 2 stone in 4 weeks claim bonkers, but there's a handful of other issues with the post.

At first I thought the two photos were of two people, only a quick search shows that they are in fact pictures of the same person - but taken around 10 years apart. The AFTER photo, being the one taken during the I Know What You Did Last Summer era.

So, not only is it 10 years, not 4 weeks, but the fat picture is the before...

But it gets more outlandish - the fat photo has been doctored - so much so that the ring on the front of her bikini which is round in the original image has been distorted so much that it's barely recognisable as a ring

Advertising and marketing has always stretched the truth, or gilded the lilly a bit, but for a while now there's been laws in place that make obviously false advertising illegal, which more recently includes internet advertising.

Well, this advertising campaign doesn't include a little bending of the truth or shiney flowers... it is purely false and/or fictitious, so as it's clearly no longer false advertising and now into the realms of active fraud why is it being allowed to happen?

Sporky

Because the ASA are either criminally lazy or in the pocket of the advertisers. I've pointed out a number of adverts to them that included provably untrue claims and they've refused to take action.

Emp_Fab

I like to think that absurdly misleading advertisements are part of Darwin's theory of evolution.  If you are gullible and dense enough to believe such adverts, then you are doing the species a disservice by polluting its gene pool with your moron DNA.  Quite how believing these ridiculous adverts results in an inability to procreate, I'm not sure - but I'm working on it.