The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has updated its policy to bring more clarity around advertising rules for lottery operators.
Building on the 2022 rework of the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) frameworks, the update builds on the strict rules relating to the use of personalities in marketing.
With both gambling and lottery operators often having a social media presence, there are certain conditions under which using a certain personality would constitute a “strong” appeal to under-18s.
“One rule of thumb is that at least a total of 100,000 social media follower accounts registered to people under-18, across social media platforms, is indicative of strong appeal,” the update reads, prompting lottery operators to carefully consider how many followers a personality has across their social media profiles.
Lotteries were also reminded that besides social media presence, personalities are also more likely to find a younger audience when they are close to that age group, hence the use of the likeness of someone recognisable under 25 will also be deemed as “having strong appeal” to under-18s.
However, unlike gambling operators, some exemptions of the above rule do exist for lotteries. These include certain circumstances when under-25s are used to depict the contribution to good causes.
Most importantly, the ASA advised lotteries to be extra careful when looking at using personalities for which there’s not enough UK-specific data, for example a personality whose followers consist of mostly foreigners.