Nike Football Advertising Campaign Banned On Twitter
The advertising firm in the UK has banned Nike for allegedly hiring Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney and his Arsenal competitor Jack Wilshere for promoting their brand on Twitter through their tweets, while not telling the people that the tweets were actually for marketing purposes.
The Advertising Standards Authority said that both the footballers violated the rules of promoting the campaign that was not clearly labeled as adverts.
Nike, which has lucrative sponsorship deals with the major athletes, ran the company’s promotion over Twitter, the social networking site, as part of aggressive marketing under the ‘Make it Count’ advertising campaign.
A tweet posted by Rooney, who has more than 4 million followers, said: “My resolution — to start the year as a champion, and finish it as a champion…#makeitcount gonike.me/makeitcount”.
Wilshere said in a tweet: “Jack Wilshere stated “In 2012, I will come back for my club — and be ready for my country.#makeitcount.gonike.me/Makeitcount”.
Nike said that these footballers are sponsored by the company, and they are allowed to tweet for this campaign “at their own discretion.” The company said that these players are independent to promote the campaign and can reply or retweet the consumer tweets.
It is estimated that the average Twitter user used to see hundreds of tweets a day, and that as such the marketing code states that ads must be “identifiable as marketing communications.”
According to the Advertising Standard Authority, it concluded from its investigation that the ending content of the tweets were “agreed with the help of a member of the Nike marketing team.”
Earlier this year, the ASA dealt with its first Twitter investigation over a Snickers campaign, which paid Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand to tweet about the chocolate bar. The ASA cleared it of complaints that it had violated the advertising rules and regulations of the country.
The ASA suggested Nike and other marketers that the ads could not be displayed again over the website, and make sure to insert ‘#ad’ to indicate they were paid by Nike.
