A complaint about an advertisement for Ryanair, which depicted an apparently drunk young man lying on a beach, has been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland.
The text that accompanied the image in the advertisement for the airline told Leaving Cert and A-Level students that "this could be you", and to book a holiday with Ryanair between "studying".
The ASAI investigated a complaint that the advertisement normalised and encouraged drunken behaviour, and encouraged drinking harmful levels of alcohol.
The authority also upheld a complaint about a post by a social media influence. The complaint considered that it was clear from the post that the influencer was working for Boots Ireland and expressed concern that the post had not been hash tagged accordingly with #sp.
Boots argued that they provided Faces by Grace with a briefing document which included the detail for the promotion and also, a request for the inclusion of #sp or #ad on posts.
The authority found 15 advertisements to have been in breach of the ASAI Code. The authority also held up complaints about email, social media, radio and print advertising.
The complaints committee is a completely independent arm of the ASAI and is responsible for considering and dealing with complaints submitted by the public.
The committee is made up of a range of experts from the advertising, media, education, consumer and marketing sectors.
Orla Twomey, Chief Executive of the ASAI, said the latest complaints bulletin illustrated the authority's ability to handle complaints across a large number of mediums.
"For the second time, a complaint involving a collaboration between a brand and an influencer / blogger has been upheld by the Complaints Committee," she said. "Over the past few years, we have spent considerable time highlighting awareness in relation to advertising best practice within this space to ensure all relevant parties are equipped with the knowledge and resources to correctly identify commercial marketing content across their platforms."
