ASA come down on Collab House for failing to adhere to the CAP code

Jack Rogers

Collab House Ltd the UK’s Top Digital influencer Agency who supply Influencers for brands such as BVLGARI, L’OREAL, Pretty Little Thing amongst others, has breached the CAP Code rules in their recent Influencer Instagram Giveaways.

The ASA responded to complaints about Instagram posts by Collab House in April 2022 which included an image of the influencer Ellie O’Donnell behind several designer items and a similar Instagram post in May 2022 which included an image of the influencer Kady McDermott. The first post included the caption “We have teamed up with our faves to give one of our lovely followers all of these amazing prizes! (Excluding Marbie) How to enter 1 Follow @collabhousegiveaways and EVERYONE THEY ARE FOLLOWING 2 Tag a friend. 3 Share on story for bonus entry The winner will be announced on the 8th May. T&Cs apply […]”. The second post included the caption: “we are going to give one of our lovely followers all of these amazing prizes! How to enter 1 Follow @collabhousegiveaways and EVERYONE WE ARE FOLLOWING 2 Tag a friend. Easy! The winner will be announced on the 15th May. T&C’s apply […]”.

The promotions were challenged on the grounds that:

  1.  the entry criteria to follow all of Collab House’s followers was unfair since the list of profiles Collab House followed changed throughout the promotion period; and
  2. the prizes had not been awarded since Collab House had failed to announce any winners after the promotion.

Regarding the entry criteria, the ASA considered the likelihood of valid entries that had followed all of Collab House’s followers subsequently being invalid due to no fault of the entrants. In the absence of a list of all the profiles Collab House had followed during the promotion, the ASA found that the entry criteria breached rule 8.14 of the CAP code which states that Promoters must ensure that their promotions are conducted under proper supervision and make adequate resources available to administer them.

The ASA found that there was no evidence that Collab House Giveaways had awarded the prizes and Collab House Giveaways’ failure to announce the winners of the promotions for either posts, was found to be a breach of rule 8.15.1 of the CAP Code which states that “Promoters must award the prizes as described in their marketing communications or reasonable equivalents, normally within 30 days”.

Therefore, the ASA upheld the complaints and found that the promotions breached rule 8.2 of the CAP Code as they were not administered fairly.

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