Banned Lucozade advert

By Dominic Edwards

Complaint:

• 63 Complaints

• Consumer: We believe this ad has given false information, stating that ‘It

hydrates you better than water’ that we do believe is a breach of Health and

Food Guidelines.

• HFG: Having the information at our disposal we do believe that this is not in

our regulated guidelines, therefore making it false information and

misleading audiences into drinking energy drinks over water.

Lucozade Response:

• The advert represented that ‘carbohydrate-electrolyte solutions enhance the

absorption of water during exercise, there is no indication that we have

promoted our product over water. Although in our poster ad we have

indicated this in an attempt to promote out product, and we do believe that

we have not breached EU guidelines. We also believe our product does

contain carbohydrates in which water does not contain the provided ‘fuel’’ at

all.

ASA Response - Upheld:

• Even if we had accepted that ‘fuels’ was an accepted rewording of the

authorised claim ‘contributes to the maintenance of endurance performance

during prolonged endurance exercise, we noted that the claim did not make

any comparison with water, and we therefore considered that it would not be

accepted for GSK to state the product ‘fuel’