Nike UK Has Twitter Campaign Banned By ASA

A Twitter campaign by Nike has been banned, after the advertising watchdog decided that its use of the personal accounts of footballers Wayne Rooney and Jack Wilshere broke rules for not being clear that they were adverts.

Nike, which has lucrative sponsorship deals with the Manchester United and Arsenal footballers, ran the Twitter campaign as part of a wider marketing push under the Make It Count advertising strapline.

A tweet posted by Rooney, who has 4.37m followers, said: "My resolution — to start the year as a champion, and finish it as a champion...#makeitcount gonike.me/makeitcount".

Jack Wilshere stated "In 2012, I will come back for my club — and be ready for my country.#makeitcount.gonike.me/Makeitcount".

The Advertising Standards Authority, which dealt with its first Twitter investigation in March over a Snickers campaign using Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand, received a complaint that it was not clear the footballers' tweets were advertising.

In response Nike UK said both players were well-known for being sponsored by the retailer, which argued that Twitter "followers" would not be misled about the relationship it had with the players.

The company added the web address in the tweet was clearly branded as Nike, and that the message carried the company's ad strapline, making it clear which tweets by the players were personal and which were ads.

The ASA said it was understood from its investigation that the final content of the tweets was "agreed with the help of a member of the Nike marketing team".

"We considered that the Nike reference was not prominent and could be missed," said the ASA. "We considered there was nothing obvious in the tweets to indicate they were Nike marketing communications."

The watchdog added: "In the absence of such an indication, for example #ad, we considered the tweets were not obviously identifiable as Nike marketing communications and therefore concluded they breached the [advertising] code. The ads must no longer appear. We told Nike to ensure that its advertising was obviously identifiable as such".

(H)