Love Island star has TikTok ad banned by watchdog for not being ‘sufficiently clear’ advertising

Former Love Island contestant Tasha Ghouri has had a TikTok advert banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), after the regulator found the social media video was not “obviously recognisable” as an ad.

Ms Ghouri, who became the first deaf Islander to appear on the ITV reality show last year, shared a video compilation of herself in November in which she wrote “POV: you’re doing what you’re passionate about. Using my voice.”

The post was set to the song “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John and Britney Spears, which had been remixed by DJ Joel Corry, and included the label “soundad” in the video caption.

@tashaghouri1

🤍 #TinyDancer #HoldMeCloser soundad

♬ Hold Me Closer – Joel Corry Remix – Elton John & Britney Spears

However, after one individual questioned whether the video was “obviously identifiable as a marketing communication”, the upload became subject to an ASA investigation.

EMI Records, a division of Universal Music Operations Ltd who partnered with Ms Ghouri on the post, told the watchdog it was “standard practice” for them to ask influencers they work with to include “musicad” or “sounded” as a video tag on paid collaborations.

“They believed that was an appropriate and obvious way to identify when an influencer had been paid to use a particular piece of music as the soundtrack for their content.

“They contrasted that approach for labelling ads with the use of ‘advertorial’ or branded content in posts where the entire content was branded, involved product placement in the visuals or was sponsored by a third party,” the ASA ruling reads.

In guidance for influencers released by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), who produce advertising codes enforced by the ASA, the organisation states both the ASA and non-ministerial government department the Competitions and Markets Authority expect ad labels to “just say it how it is, in a way that consumers understand”.

They list labels such as ‘ad’, ‘advert’, ‘advertising’ and ‘advertisement’ as examples, and go on to add that a social media platform’s own ‘paid partnership’ tools “may be sufficient” if such a label is “upfront, clear and prominent”.

In their response to the ASA’s enquiries, TikTok said if Ms Ghouri had used their ‘branded content’ tool – required under the site’s terms of service and branded content policy – the post “would have been identified as a marketing communication”.

Meanwhile, Off Limits Entertainment – representing Ms Ghouri – pointed out the ‘soundad’ label to the regulator, and said they believed this was “more than sufficient” to identify the soundtrack as an ad.

Yet in a ruling published on Wednesday, the ASA upheld the complaint and concluded Ms Ghouri’s video breached the advertising code.

Confirming the video was a marketing communication, the watchdog added: “We acknowledged that the post included the label ‘soundad’, which was intended to convey that Ms Ghouri was specifically promoting the soundtrack of the post, rather than, for example, a product or brand in the post’s visual content.

“We considered, however, it unlikely that all UK TikTok users would understand the meaning of the label ‘soundad’. We considered the ‘ad’ part of the label was insufficiently prominent and we considered that it could be interpreted as a misspelling of ‘sounded’.

“We therefore considered that the label ‘soundad’ was not sufficiently clear to indicate that the post, in particular the soundtrack, was advertising. We concluded that the post was not obviously recognisable as a marketing communication and therefore breached the code.”

They continued to say the ad must not appear again in its current form, and that they had told both Universal Music Operations Ltd and Ms Ghouri to ensure future posts are “obviously identifiable as marketing communications, including where the audio content of a post was advertising”.

The ASA said this could be done by including a “clear and prominent” label, such as ‘#ad’, “at a minimum”.

At the time of writing, the advert is still available on TikTok, and has had almost 480,000 views.

Off Limits were approached by The Limping Chicken for a further comment from Ms Ghouri, but no statement was provided.

Photo: @tashaghouri1/TikTok.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.