Lord Sugar’s tweet broke UK advertising rules, says watchdog | UK News

A Lord Sugar tweet promoting a company created by a winner of The Apprentice has broken UK advertising rules.

In December, the 73-year-old presenter of the BBC television show published a tweet that encourages people to buy a teeth whitening package as the “perfect Christmas gift.”

“If you know someone who longs for whiter teeth, this is the perfect Christmas gift for them,” he tweeted Dec. 9. Embedded in the tweet was a link to Stylsmile and a tweet from the company promoting a toothbrush kit for teeth whitening.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received a complaint that it was not made clear that the tweet was actually advertising, since Sugar was director of the company.

Stylsmile is led by Tom Pellereau, a former winner of The Apprentice, and Sugar is a 50% partner in the business.

The company said it would have been clear to Twitter users that Sugar was connected to the business, and it was made public on primetime television in front of millions of viewers. The tweet was not a “covert promotion” for Stylsmile, the company said, as Sugar was known to regularly post about its business on social media.

The advertising regulator said UK rules state that marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such, and must clarify their commercial content if it is not obvious from the context.

“We believe that although Lord Sugar was a well-known investor, it was not immediately clear to all consumers that he had a business interest in Stylsmile UK from the tweet itself,” said the ASA. “Therefore, we concluded that the business intent behind the tweet was not made clear upfront and was obviously not identifiable as a marketing communication.”

The ASA ruled that Sugar’s tweet violated UK advertising regulation and told him not to post marketing messages on social media without being clear.

“The ad should not appear again in the form you complained about,” the ASA said. “We told Stylsmile and Lord Sugar to make sure they made clear the business intent of their posts in the future, for example, by including a clear and prominent identifier in their social media posts like #ad.”