A complaint against a Coral ad deployed during the Cheltenham Festival has not been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The ad in question featured a man dressed in a fashion that suggested he was attending a horseracing event, while looking through a pair of binoculars, accompanied by text that read: “The head to toe tweeders [...]We’re here for it [...] Coral.”
This ad came about via a mobile digital billboard on a van, with the complaint focused on whether the ad was responsibly placed, as it was parked close to two schools.
In response, Coral explained that each year it would deploy eight mobile digital billboards, known as digivans on each day of the Cheltenham Festival.
During the Festival, the van would be instructed to face the direction of traffic heading towards the racecourse in the mornings and again facing the traffic making their way from the racecourse to the town centre/station.
The operator had informed the digivans to stay at least 200 metres from any school and provided a map to show where they were placed relative to local schools.
Coral went on to say that the digivans were live between 9am and 5pm, and even when the vans arrived before 9am were informed not to turn on the ads until the stated hours when children would have already entered schools.
Following this, Coral re-briefed its media partners and agencies, but Mobile Media Group said it had done everything to ensure the campaigns were compliant in terms of not targeting children, and keeping the digivans over 100 metres from and not in direct line of sight of a local primary school. It was also said that it had received no complaints directly in relation to this particular campaign.
The ASA therefore decided not to uphold the complaint, as the digivan locations were far enough away from local schools, while not being in a direct line of sight and as the ads themselves were not activated until after 9am.
This followed the CAP Code, which states that “no medium should be used to advertise gambling if more than 25% of its audience was under the age of 18,” as the ASA believed appropriate steps had been taken to ensure this and so no further action was required.
Two weeks ago, the ASA upheld a ruling against Geoff Banks related to a free bet on the Scottish Grand National in April 2024.
