Rio Ferdinand has been rapped by the advertising watchdog over a football World Cup social media post promoting a Qatar tourism website, it was revealed today.
An Instagram post by the former Manchester United and England defender seen before Christmas last year featured a video which promoted the Visit Qatar site.
A caption alongside the video stated: "Time spent eating my bodyweight in the kitchen! That's a wrap for Qatar, been great filming behind the scenes and meeting so many locals!" Text underneath that stated '#VisitQatar' and below that '#ad'.
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But the Advertising Standards Authority, the UK's regulator of advertising, said in a written judgement today that when viewing the post on a mobile device the hashtags were not visible, and a user would have had to click on a 'more' button to view them.
The ASA said a viewer challenged whether the post was obviously identifiable as a marketing communication. The watchdog said Qatar Tourism, trading as Visit Qatar, acknowledged that the presentation of the label was not prominent enough.
"They informed us that they had liaised with Rio Ferdinand's representatives and that the post had been amended to make the label clearer. They also informed us that they would ensure that all future marketing communication posts would be more prominently labelled," said the ASA ruling.
The watchdog added TV pundit Ferdinand's representative said they 'believed that all guidelines had been followed as the post included a #ad label'. "They said they used the #ad label because Instagram had previously advised them to do so," said the ASA.
Advertising codes state marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such and make clear their commercial intent.
In the ruling, the ASA said it understood Ferdinand had a 'commercial relationship with Visit Qatar in which he had been paid to promote the tourism industry of the country using his Instagram account'.
"We therefore considered that posts made under that relationship fell within the remit of the CAP [The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing] code. We considered that Visit Qatar and Rio Ferdinand were therefore jointly responsible for ensuring that marketing activity conducted on Rio Ferdinand's account was compliant with the CAP Code.
"We considered that the positioning of the label was not sufficiently prominent to make clear upfront to Instagram users engaging with the post that it was an ad.
"Furthermore, when the post was viewed on a mobile device, the #ad label would not have been visible unless users clicked on the 'more' button."
The ASA said it found the ad did not make clear upfront its commercial intent and as a result, concluded it was not obviously identifiable as a marketing communication. The watchdog said it found the ad breached the code and upheld the complaint.
"The ad must not appear again in the form complained of," said the ASA.
"We told Qatar Tourism t/a Visit Qatar and Rio Ferdinand to ensure that their future ads were obviously identifiable as marketing communications and the commercial intent was made clear, and that identifiers such as '#ad' were clearly and prominently displayed."
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