TV Stars Chloe Ferry, Helen Briggs, and Myles Barnett Have Posts Banned for Promoting Service ‘Debt Slayers’ To Their Followers
Three reality TV stars have had their posts banned from Instagram – Geordie Shore’s Chloe Ferry (3.7 million), Ex On The Beach’s Helen Briggs (630,000), and Towie’s Myles Barnett (227,000), who have a combined following of more than four million.
The stars failed to comply with a major rule: influencers must, using clear identifiers, inform their followers when they’re posting paid ads.
Ferry, Briggs and Barnett posted content paid for by Debt Slayers – an advice service that claims to help individuals wipe out 85% of their debt – and failed to notify their followers of the paid agreement. The Advertising Standards Authority have since labelled the these posts “misleading.”
What Were the Posts in Question?
Ferry posted back in January, “If you know someone who is over £5000+ in debt, this is a new fully regulated scheme that can help you write off 85 per cent of the debt,” and provided a link to the company website. It must be noted that the, in reality, the company fails to provide the services advertised, instead passing peoples details to a third party site.
Barnett posted, “One of my friends just got 81 per cent of his debt wiped off. So if you’ve got debt above £5,000 – it could be credit cards, catalogues, car finance … a loan, anything like that, swipe up, there’s more information on there … you can wipe off a big, big chunk of your debt.”
Briggs posted a similar post back in December 2020. One of Briggs’ agents announced that her future marketing communications would be correctly labelled moving forward, whilst those representing Barnett and Ferry agreed that the posts were a breach of advertising rules.
Barnett and Ferry’s representatives announced that they would never work with the debt management company again.
We've published six rulings this week, including one banning Instagram stories by influencers promoting a debt advice company for not making clear the risk of IVAs and for not making their posts obviously identifiable as ads: https://t.co/dbGYsX8oPm pic.twitter.com/XhOCfYlolT
— ASA (@ASA_UK) June 2, 2021
The Advertising Standards Authority stated:
“We told Ashteck Media to ensure their ads did not exaggerate the speed or ease with which debts could be reduced, that they made risks and fees of IVAs and other debt management services clear and that they made clear that they passed on inquirers’ details to third parties and did not provide the service themselves.
“We also told Ashteck Media, Helen Briggs, Myles Barnett and Chloe Ferry to ensure that ads were obviously identifiable as marketing communications in future, for example, by including a clear identifier such as ‘#ad‘.”
Finally, for our previous #SocialShort, click here.
