Watchdog slams the brakes on drug-fuelled Air Up ad

German water bottle company Air Up has found itself back on the wrong side of the UK ad watchdog for yet another offensive ad, despite arguing that it was simply employing a “colloquial expression of surprise and frustration”.

The paid-for TikTok ad featured a man lying on a road marking of a bicycle and pretending to pedal. A voiceover said, “What the fuck, are you high? Get hydrated.” On-screen text stated, “What the f#%l? Are you hy?”. A caption stated, “Ready to Get Hy?”.

Only one consumer contacted the Advertising Standards Authority to challenge whether the ad was offensive but this then triggered an investigation.

In response to the ASA inquiry, Air Up insisted that the phrase “Are you high” was not a reference to the use of drugs. It said that the phrase was a colloquial reference to someone acting strangely or ‘out of their mind’.

It added that the use of the word “fuck” was not offensive in the context of the ad and it was also a colloquial expression, this time of surprise and frustration.

On both of those points, Air Up provided various examples which it believed demonstrated the colloquial meaning of those phrases.

However, the ASA was not impressed, citing the CAP Code which states ads must not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

It said it considered that consumers would understand the phrase “are you high”, in combination with the imagery used, to imply that the man was behaving out of character due to being under the influence of recreational drugs. Although it understood that while the use of “high” was a play on the word “hydrated”, the use of drugs was not relevant to the product.

The watchdog added that by presenting the effects of drugs as a subject of humour and including the caption “Ready to get Hy”, the reference trivialised recreational drug use by humourising the serious psychological effects it could have on an individual.

In addition, the ASA cited consumer research which showed that the use of words such as “fuck” were likely to offend to such an extent that they should not be used at all in marketing communications even if they were relevant to the product, unless very carefully targeted to an audience that was unlikely to be offended by them.

For those reasons, the ASA concluded that the ad was irresponsible and likely to cause serious and widespread offence. Banning the ad from appearing again, the watchdog warned the business about its future conduct.

This is the second time in 10 months that the firm has been fingered by the ASA. Last July, the company, which claims to promote “decency and morality”, was censured for an ad which featured a man urinating into a lake in a spot that was designed to show how the firm could solve “daily hydration”.