EasyJet Cleared Over Millionaire Cheat Ads
The ASA has cleared EasyJet for using an image of Major Charles Ingram, the convicted Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? cheat, in an advertising campaign to promote its low cost flights.
The major and his wife complained to the Advertising Standards Authority after the budget airline featured the couple in a nationwide press campaign without their permission.
The ad showed a photograph of the pair beside the headline “Need A Cheap Getaway?” The strapline below the photograph stated: “No Major Fraud Required. Lowest Fares To The Sun.”
The Ingrams complained that the ad constituted an invasion of their privacy because their image was used without their permission. They also claimed the tone of the ad was offensive and distressing to them.
The advertisers said they had not asked the major and his wife for permission to use their image because they were well known and their photograph was already in the public domain.
They also claimed the ad was not intended to offend or distress the complainants and was merely a light-hearted observation in the fact that the Ingrams were found guilty of trying to defraud the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? game show.
The ASA concluded that the ad portrayed the major and his wife in a way that was consistent with the verdicts in their recent court case and not in an unfairly adverse way. It also said that while companies were encouraged to get permission before they used an individual in an advert, they were not required to obtain it. The complaints were dismissed.
Last month the ASA refused to uphold complaints against a series of washroom ads for Dennis Publishing’s Maxim magazine that featured a drunk man lying on the pavement by next to a pool of his own vomit (see Maxim Escapes ASA Censure Over Washroom Ads).
ASA: 020 7580 555 www.asa.org.uk
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