The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a Jaded London advert for glamorising smoking. The fashion label, worn by celebrities like Beyonce and Taylor Swift, used an image of a woman posing with a lit cigarette in a campaign earlier this year.
Advert Details
The picture, promoting summerwear, showed a woman in a pink backless minidress holding what appeared to be a lit cigarette in front of a Vespa-style scooter. The ASA ruled the advert breached its rules on promotional material and cannot run again in its current form.
The watchdog said the advert was "heavily stylised and presented the model in a fashionable and attractive manner", making smoking seem appealing. ASA rules require adverts to show a "sense of responsibility to consumers and to society", and smoking should not be presented in an appealing way, condoned, or encouraged.
ASA Ruling
The ASA added that the woman was wearing "fashionable clothing and accessories standing in front of a scooter next to a body of water, which the ASA considered evoked an aspirational holiday lifestyle". The visible ash at the tip of the cigarette suggested it was lit.
Jaded London, founded by siblings Jade Camber and Grant Goulden in 2013, argued it was "not clear" the model was holding a cigarette because it was slimmer than a normal one and "did not appear to be lit". They also said the cigarette was not the "focus of the ad" but agreed to stop using images of models smoking in future.
Company Response
The company's Instagram feed contains several other images of people smoking while wearing its clothes, including one where the model appears to take a drag and another where she holds it between her lips. An ASA spokesperson said it could not comment on whether these posts broke the rules without them going through its formal process.
The Standard has approached Jaded London for comment.
