Love Islanders named and shamed by the ASA

With the latest ‘influencer’ recruits fresh out the Love Island villa, the ASA yesterday added five former Love Islanders to their non-dedicated non-disclosure webpage for continually disregarding the rules.  

With an ever-increasing number of complaints to the ASA regarding the appropriate disclosure of influencer ads, the ASA set up a dedicated web page to name and shame influencers who are repeatedly misleading followers by failing to label their social media posts as ads. In the ASA’s influencer monitoring report in March 2021 which involved an analysis of over 24,000 individual stories, posts, IGTV and reels across 122 UK-based influencers which revealed a ‘disappointing overall rate of compliance with the rules’, with the rules being followed only 35% of the time.

The ASA have been working hard to make it as simple as possible for islanders and other influencers to get to grip with the rules, even producing an ABC Cheatsheet. However this has not been enough for the five Love Islanders who have just been added to the ASA’s name and shame webpage.

Eve and Jess Gale, Belle Hassan, Francesca Allen and Anna Vakili were all contacted by the ASA’s compliance team and asked to provide assurances that they would include clear ad labels in their advertising posts. However, after failing to provide those assurances or defaulting on them, they have all been added to the webpage.

They will be on here for 3 months, whilst also being subject to enhanced spot checks on their posts. If any influencers on the webpage continue to break the ASA’s rules, the ASA have further sanctions, such as working with social media platforms to remove their content, referring them to statutory bodies for fines and taking ads out against them.

Our in-house legal team at PromoVeritas are experienced in all matters regarding influencer and brand. The in-house Legal team at PromoVeritas are experienced in all these areas, helping to train brands, agencies and their influencers on how to avoid breaching the rules and creating comprehensive contracts to protect all parties. Contact us at info@promoveritas.com to receive a recording of our recent Influencer Marketing Webinar with the Competition & Markets Authority or find out more about our effective range of influencer services.