A set of commercials featuring celebrities including Justin Bieber and Katy Perry has been banned in Europe.
According the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) the ads, promoting Proactiv, were misleading and thus they will not be allowed to air.
"We considered the overall impression of the ads was that the celebrities were continued and regular users of Proactiv and noted the same endorsement claims were included on the US Proactiv website," the ASA told the Guardian.
Claiming a different ingredient is used in the UK product than in the U.S. product, the ASA says the celebrities only used the product for a few weeks.
"We noted the signed statements, which related to only five of the seven testimonials, said the celebrities had each used the UK formulation of the product for a period of only several weeks, between one and three years before the ads appeared. We noted the ads were targeted at a UK audience and that the UK Proactiv products had a different active ingredient to the US version. In that context, we therefore considered the claims of continued use had not been substantiated. We concluded that the ads were misleading," reports the ASA.
Jessica Simpson and a number of other celebs have promoted ProActiv in the past.
