Website admits fault over 'you lose, you booze' ad

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A daily deals website that advertised a drinking game in which if "you lose, you booze", has admitted the ad was an error of judgement that strayed from advertising principles.

J Bowers complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the "iPartyHard Drunken Tower" game that was advertised on the 1-Day daily deals website.

The ad said: "Liven up that leaving do and crank up the fun on family get togethers with one of these Party Hard Drunken Tower drinking games - you lose, you booze!"

It was a Jenga-style game in which blocks were removed from a tower, but each block removed had a "groggy demand" the player had to perform.

"Once completed, place the block back to the top of the tower and await the next round of tipsy tasks," the ad said.

The complainant said the ad was not socially responsible because it encouraged binge drinking and did not stop young people buying the product.

The advertiser, 1-Day, accepted it had made an error of judgement and the description of the ad had gone onto the website without being duly scrutinised.

"As it was sold during the busy Christmas period we were not able to have all product descriptions reviewed prior to the site going live each day and this is left to our team of web content experts to use their skills to create the copy for all adverts."

If the product was to be sold again, the advertiser said it would re-write the text.

The ASA noted 1-Day's response and acknowledged it had since put checks and balances in place to ensure advertisements were socially responsible.

It ruled the matter was settled.