A post from Ozzy Osbourne’s Twitter account has been banned because it failed to disclose that it was an advertisement.
In February, Osbourne shared a video of himself playing a virtual reality game on the Sony PlayStation VR2. The video shows him in a living room, unboxing the headset and controllers from the PlayStation box and swearing at virtual dinosaurs.
The tweet of the frontman read:
“Did this spot with PlayStation team. We had a lot of fun. Their new VR2 is really amazing.”
The Advertising Standards Authority raised a complaint due to not clearly stating it was an ad. The statement read:
“We considered the wording, including the use of the word spot to refer to the video, was not sufficient to clearly indicate to consumers that the tweet was part of a commercial relationship between Sony and Ozzy Osbourne.”
Sony stated that they granted Osbourne’s management company final script approval. The rocker was contracted to post a tweet sharing the video as part of the agreement. Sony believed the tweet’s wording at the beginning was enough for consumers to understand the video was a commercial even before watching it.
Despite Sony’s arguments, the ASA upheld the complaint and made a statement. A part of the statement read:
“The video included features which might have indicated there was a commercial relationship between Sony and Ozzy Osbourne, including the use of PlayStation logos and straplines. However, because there were no clear and upfront identifiers in the tweet or video, we considered the ad was ambiguous as to Ozzy Osbourne’s commercial relationship with Sony. We concluded its commercial intent would not be immediately clear to consumers.”
It added:
“Because the ad did not make clear its commercial intent upfront, we considered it was not obviously identifiable as a marketing communication and concluded that it breached the Code.”
The ASA has ruled that the ad in question should not be shown again, and they have urged Sony and Ozzy Osbourne to label their ads as marketing communications in the future clearly.
See the video below.
