Rooney Cleared of Breaking Advertising Rules Over Nike Tweet

Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney has been cleared of breaking advertising rules by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), in regards to a Nike marketing tweet.

The ASA ban subliminal promotional messages and a tweet from Rooney’s Twitter account read: “The pitches change. The killer instinct doesn’t. Own the turf, anywhere. @NikeFootball #myground.”

A complaint was made because the message was ‘not obviously identifiable as a marketing communication,’ but instead an advert.

The ASA advise players to use the hashtags #spon or #ad to clearly identify paid-for content, but the organisation ruled that the tweet was different to Rooney’s other tweets around the same time, in regards to spelling an punctuation.

“Whilst we considered that not all Twitter users would be aware of Wayne Rooney’s sponsorship deal with Nike or the particular Nike campaign the tweet promoted, we considered that in the particular context of a tweet by Wayne Rooney the wording of the initial statement was such that in combination with @NikeFootball and #myground, the overall effect was that the tweet was obviously identifiable as a Nike marketing communication.”