Britain’s biggest vitamin company Vitabiotics has been told by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to change two ads following complaints that they included unauthorised health claims.
In the first ad – a TV ad for the company’s Wellman product – a complainant challenged whether a reference to Professor Arnold Beckett complied with the CAP Code, because they said it had the effect of emphasising health claims in the ad. The ASA agreed that it breached the Code which prohibits the use of health claims referring to the recommendation of an individual health professional in ads for foods or food supplements, despite text at the bottom of the screen that stated: “Prof Beckett is cited as a product inventor and former Vitabiotics chairman, not as a health professional.”
Robert Taylor, Vitabiotics’ vice president, told the ingredients industry website NutraIngredients: “We disagree with the ASA’s decision … since Professor Beckett was not making any health claim, nor was he ever a health professional, nor does the advert contain a health claim that makes reference to a recommendation.”
A second complaint that the ad breached the Code by implying there were proven benefits to vitamin supplements structured specifically for men and for women was not upheld. The ASA agreed that the claim ‘iron which helps reduce tiredness and fatigue’ was one authorized on the EU register, while the band names Wellman and Wellwoman and the phrase ‘tailored vitamins for men and women’ were non-specific health claims targeted at men and women as part of the general healthy population, and therefore not in breach of the Code.
In a separate case, a complainant said that a print advertisment for Vitabiotics’ Menopace product made an implied claim that the product would treat or alleviate menopausal symptoms.
In its response, Vitabiotics Ltd stated that it was aware that marketing communications promoting food supplements were not permitted to imply or make unlicensed medicinal claims. And it said that it wasn’t its intention to imply that the Menopace would treat or alleviate menopausal symptoms, and made the point that it had never before received a complaint about the ad, or similar iterations, which had run for over ten years.
But the ASA upheld this complaint, concluding: “We considered that the overall impression of the ad was that the product regulated hormonal activity for menopausal women and could improve any associated negative symptoms that they were experiencing, and therefore considered that the ad made an implied health claim.”
A complaint that the phrases ‘UK’s No 1 Menopause Formula’ and ‘Voted No 1 for the menopause’ “misleadingly implied efficacy because they were based on sales data” was not upheld by the ASA. The Authority said it was satisfied that the claims were factually correct and that consumers would not conclude that they were misleading.
