On 1 January 2012, at 5.43 in the morning, Rooney told over four million of his 'followers' about his resolution for the new year: he intended to start the year as a champion, and finish it as a champion. The same day Wilshere promised his audience (a meagre 1.3 million) he would come back for [his] club - and be ready for [his] country.

What triggered a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority - and its first adjudication about advertising on Twitter - was that both tweets included a link to Nike's 'Make it Count' website. The Code of Advertising Practice (CAP Code) states that marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such and that marketing communications must make clear their commercial intent. The self-regulatory body of the advertising industry has agreed the advertisements indeed breached its code.

How about an #ad hashtag?

In its defence Nike had stated it believed the tweets could be objectively viewed as marketing communications. The company argued both footballers are well known for being sponsored by Nike and that their 'followers' would therefore not be misled about the their relationship with the company. Nike also pointed out Twitter is a more direct channel of communication than traditional media. A tweet can contain no more than 140 characters; adding the text 'advertising feature', for instance, would leave little space for the actual advertisement.

The Advertising Standards Authority disagreed. It rejected Nike's assumption that people who follow Rooney and Wilshere on Twitter are aware they are sponsored by the company, and it ruled that the fact that Twitter is different from traditional media didn't justify that there was nothing obvious in the tweets to indicate they were Nike marketing communications. The regulator added it would been possible to indicate the tweets were advertisements by adding a 'hashtag' such as '#ad'. In March an adjudication about tweets promoting Snickers – posted by footballer Rio Ferdinand and 'media personality' Katie Price – ruled that the the advertising code hadn't been breached because the tweets included the hashtag '#spon'.

#IgnoreASA

Interestingly, Wayne Rooney has not yet deleted the tweet. The Advertising Standards Authority told the BBC it's relatively relaxed about this because the offending tweet is not at the top of his Twitter feed. The regulator doesn't have the power to enforce its adjudications.

Jack Wilshere's has removed his tweet – but that's because he recently suspended his Twitter account after receiving personal abuse about an unrelated issue.

Links

• ASA Adjudication on Nike (UK) Ltd (asa.org.uk)
• ASA Adjudication on Mars Chocolate UK Ltd (asa.org.uk)
• CAP Code (asa.org.uk)
• Nike's Twitter football advertising campaign banned (bbc.co.uk)
• Wayne Rooney on Twitter (twitter.com)