An ad for a range of “super pants” which claimed the brand could protect testicles from the effects of radiation emitted by mobile phones has been blackballed by the watchdog.
Founded by Joseph Perkins, Wireless Armour claims that its pants can preserve male fertility by protecting wearers from electromagnetic radiation emitted from everyday devices, such as a phone tucked into a trouser pocket.
The brand has even been backed by Sir Richard Branson, who named Wireless Armour as one of his “top ten back-of-an-envelope start-up ideas” at the Business Show in London last year.
But following a single complaint about an online ad for the brand, Wireless Armour was forced to jump to its defence. It cited a number of studies which it claimed show that a mobile phone positioned 2.5cm away from the testes in a trouser pocket had a proven negative impact on male fertility by decreasing sperm count and motility.
However, the Advertising Standards Authority said the studies failed to demonstrate the link. One relied on the phone being switched on to Bluetooth mode, and also said that “because male productive organs were separated by multiple tissue layers, it was not possible to extrapolate the effects seen to real-life conditions without further research”.
The ASA rejected a study based on male rat sperm, which it said could not be extrapolated to humans. Another study failed to consider the effect of leaving a phone in standby mode or the contribution of other possible EM sources, such as computers and radio towers.
The ASA said: “We therefore considered that none of the papers that had been provided demonstrated that mobile phone radiation had a proven negative impact on human male fertility, and concluded that the claims asserting a link between the two were misleading.”
The advert was banned and Wireless Armour told to provide adequate evidence to substantiate claims made in its future marketing.
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‘Super pants’ ad hit where it hurts http://t.co/inH4wYsfEO #directmarketing #digitalmarketing #advertising #CRM #data