On 11 May 2022, the Advertising Standards Authority published a replacement ruling deciding that a radio advertisement for the online shopping provider Very was irresponsible.
The radio advertisement “featured a woman who stated, “My Bella is logo mad. I tell you what, she’d rather go to school in her socks than in trainers that aren’t Adidas or Nike. But, I wanted to treat her, so I went to Very and got all the stuff she wanted, and I was able to spread the cost. This was a really big year for Bella, and I want her to smash it …”, followed by a voice-over that stated, “With Very Pay, you have a choice of ways to pay for this very big school moment. Life is this very moment””.
The Advertising Standards Authority decided that the advertisement “pressure on parents to purchase branded shoes or other expensive designer items, on the basis they could play a significant role in their child’s success at school” and that “branded shoes, in and of themselves, were not a necessity in the same way that school shoes were more generally”. It also decided that the advertisement’s “messaging explicitly connected the use of a form of credit to buying more expensive goods, such as branded goods, and played on the anxieties parents might feel about their children starting or returning to school”.
The Advertising Standards Authority therefore concluded that the advert breached BCAP Code Rule 1.2 (on responsible advertising) because it “irresponsibly encouraged the use of credit to finance spending on expensive branded goods”.