The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint against Bestway Retail, banning a Christmas advertising campaign for Bargain Booze that featured Santa Claus.
The ruling, published today (March 19), determined that the ads, which ran on Facebook and Instagram in December 2024, had a particular appeal to children, violating advertising codes for alcohol products.
The ads depicted Santa Claus arriving at a Bargain Booze store, using a tablet to determine whether customers were “naughty” or “nice,” and magically gift-wrapping alcohol. Festive music and nostalgic Christmas imagery were prominent in the campaign.
The ASA’s ruling centred on the way Santa Claus was portrayed in the ads. While acknowledging Santa’s broad appeal across age groups, the regulator concluded that the ads’ presentation was excessively child-focused.
“The ads contained many nostalgic Christmas elements, including Father Christmas in his full traditional costume and playful festive music,” the ASA stated. “We considered that the overall impression of the ads was reminiscent of classic Christmas family films, which would be familiar, and therefore appealing, to children of all ages.”
The ASA further cited elements such as the exaggerated expressions of surprise, magical elements like Santa’s “naughty or nice” app and magical gift wrapping, and juvenile humour like festive wordplay in customer names as contributing to the ads’ appeal to children. The humour of Santa arriving in a car with the personalised plates "GIFT5 1981" and paying with contactless technology was also considered to be aimed at a younger audience.
Bargain Booze defended the ads, arguing that Santa is a cultural icon with broad appeal, not specifically targeted at children. They also emphasised that the ads did not depict anyone drinking and that they targeted the ads to an audience aged 18 and over.
However, the ASA found that the age targeting on Facebook and Instagram was insufficient, as these platforms do not require robust age verification upon sign-up.
“Because the ads were seen in an environment where users self-verified on customer sign-up and did not use robust age-verification, and interest based targeting had not been used, we considered that under-18s had not been entirely excluded from the audience,” the ASA stated.
The ASA concluded that the ads breached CAP Code rule 18.14, which prohibits alcohol advertising that particularly appeals to under-18s.
Bestway Retail has been told to ensure that future alcohol advertising does not have particular appeal to children. The ads are banned from appearing again in their original form.
