Innocent Smoothies Cleared Of Ad Claim's Charges

Recently, the folks at DDB London complained to the British advertising authority (ASA) that an ad for smoothies, created by Lowe, denigrated fruit juice. The ad claimed that smoothies contained more goodness than orange juice, because they included the flesh of the fruit.

It is interesting to note that the players here are the ad agencies--not the marketers. While I applaud the passion of the agencies to defend their work, I'm surprised that the marketing chiefs on the two sides appear not to have weighed in. Perhaps they saw it as a silly argument.

And, apparently, the british authorities felt the same way.

The ad in question, for Innocent, whose tagline is "Little Tasty Drinks" has been cleared of exaggerating the health benefits of smoothies over fruit juice.

But the authority said: "We considered that viewers were unlikely to infer from the ad that freshly squeezed juice was less beneficial than it was, merely that smoothies could have additional benefits."

Brand Republic reports that the authority also heard evidence from nutrition experts that although a smoothie did not contain the whole fruit, it contained more of the whole fruit than freshly squeezed juice.

The ASA said no further action was necessary.