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The advertising watchdog has banned many commercials for prescription only weight loss drugsCiting concerns that they exploit “people’s insecurities” body image,
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned social media promotion of Checkup, SkinnyJab and MedExpress.
They were found to be violating rules prohibiting advertising prescription only medications (POM) Direct to the public.
According to the ASA, two of the banned campaigns raised “serious social responsibility concerns”.
One such illustration from MedExpress shows a woman looking in the mirror, accompanied by the text: “I wish I had known sooner that I could lose weight after birth with a medicine weight loss Treatment from MedExpress.
The ASA said the ad “encouraged new mothers to prioritize weight loss by using weight loss drugs, exploited their insecurities about body image and placed pressure on them to conform to body image stereotypes”.
It also found that the advertising was “irresponsible”, as the weight loss drugs contained warnings for breastfeeding women.
MedExpress told the ASA that it believed the ad did not explicitly suggest that losing weight after birth was a priority and that there was no intention to use gender stereotypes in the ad.
The Checkup ad included an image of a woman looking at herself in a mirror and text that read, “I don’t want to be skinny. I don’t want to be the biggest person in the room”, the watchdog said.
The ASA found that the ad “irresponsibly exploits people’s insecurities” regarding body image. Stigma associated with being a certain size,
Responding to the ASA, Checkup said it had deliberately used a person who appeared to be significantly overweight, believing the ad did not give the impression that being overweight is undesirable or that people of healthy weight should strive to lose weight.
Jess Tye, regulatory project manager at the ASA, said: “Both the law and our rules make clear that POMs cannot be promoted directly to the public.
“And today’s decisions also send a clear message that advertising based on people’s insecurities about body image is not acceptable.
“This is a priority area for us and we have done further work to ensure that people are protected from irresponsible and illegal weight loss POM adverts.”
The ban is part of ongoing action by the ASA, which is working with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the General Pharmaceutical Council to tackle advertising promoting weight-loss POM.