National Lottery have ‘irresponsible’ advert banned by ASA

A recent email advertising campaign for the National Lottery has been banned by the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) after a complaint from a member of the public.  The advert was sent out to existing National Lottery account holders, and was a light hearted attempt to get the many lottery players who hold accounts to purchase their usual National Lottery tickets online. The humorous email contained many possible excuses for not taking the opportunity to purchase lottery tickets online, such as being abducted by aliens.  There was even an excuse generator link included in the email which came up with excuses like "I’m sorry I’m late for work.  I was practising my lassoing and I got a bit tied up".

National Lottery adverts irresponsible?

The complainant felt that the National Lottery email adverts were ‘irresponsible’, and in their content implied that  gambling was ‘indispensible’ and encouraged players to gamble excessively. Camelot Group plc who has released the National Lottery email campaign disputed that gambling excessively was encouraged or that the National Lottery email had implied that gambling was an indispensible activity.  They defended the accusation by citing that the adverts were humorous and the excuses generated weren’t gambling related.

Advert banned as complaint upheld

The Advertising Standards Authority found in the National Lottery’s favour on the first point stating ‘We considered that the ad did not suggest there would be serious consequences from not playing’ therefore the complaint was not upheld in respect of CAP Code 2.2 for Social Responsibility.  The second part of the complaint however was upheld and the advert was banned and mustn’t be shown again in the format distributed.  The reason why the ASA upheld this part of the complaint was because of the following excerpt "The more you play the more likely you are to win".  The ASA decided that this gave the player the impression that they were more likely to win if they played more often and if they purchased multiple lines for as many Lottery games as possible, the ASA therefore concluded that ‘by referring to the greater chance of winning resulting from multiple entries, the ad encouraged repeated and potentially excessive gambling’.  This was in breach of the CAP Code 2.2 for Social Responsibility and was not to be shown again.  The full adjudication can be found on the ASA website, by following the link.