Beverage giant Coca-Cola South Pacific has been ordered to publish full-page corrections in newspapers across the country following last year’s “motherhood and myth busters” campaign.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says the company will publish corrections about its campaign that claimed its products did not make consumers fat nor rot their teeth.
The advertisements, which launched on 11 October last year, starred actress Kerry Armstrong, who claimed that Coca-Cola did not make people obese or that it was “packed with caffeine”.
Coca-Cola then published another advertisement that read: “We felt it was time to state the facts and to help you understand the truth behind Coca-Cola.”
But the ACCC has determined the advertisements were misleading, particularly the claim that 250ml of Diet Coke contained half the amount of caffeine in an average cup of tea.
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel has said in a statement that the ads were “totally unacceptable”.
“After seeing the myth-busting campaign, the ACCC was immediately concerned about the misleading messages it was likely to send to consumers,” he said.
“In particular, to mothers who are often the decision makers about family nutrition.
“Coke’s messages were totally unacceptable, creating an impression which is likely to mislead that Coca-Cola cannot contribute to weight gain, obesity and tooth decay. They also had the potential to mislead parents about the potential consequences of consuming Coca-Cola.”
Coca-Cola South Pacific spokesman Gareth Edgecome has said that the company has agreed to publish corrections in seven major newspapers, but that the advertisements were not designed to deceive.
“The ACCC were concerned we oversimplified some complex topics and we acknowledge we should have provided more information,” he told The Age.
“We do not want to be ambiguous and to ensure there is no room for misinterpretation, we will be publishing our setting-the-record-straight advertisement.”
Coca-Cola will publish corrective advertisements in The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Courier Mail, Adelaide Advertiser, The West Australian and the Hobart Mercury.
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
