An Oatly Group (NASDAQ:OTLY) marketing campaign was banned by the UK advertising watchdog for misleading viewers over its ‘green’ credentials.
The Swedish alternative milk brand claimed “climate experts say cutting dairy and meat products from our diets is the single biggest lifestyle change we can make to reduce our environmental impact.”
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched an investigation into the campaign after it received 109 complaints, the Guardian reported.
It found members of the public would believe the claim was a “definitive, objective claim that was based on scientific consensus,” rather one climate expert’s opinion.
“It’s clear that we could have been more specific in the way we described some of the scientific data,” Tim Knight, an Oatly spokesperson told the newspaper.
“We’re a science-based company and take pride in being precise, but we could have been clearer. We talk about these things a lot, because we want to make it easy for people to make an informed switch from dairy to oat drink,” Knight said.
Oatly, which listed in New York last May, also claimed in paid social media ads the diary and meat industries produced more CO2 emissions than planes, car and trains combined, which the ASA found to be “overstated”.
The adverts said Oatly milk generates 73% less CO2 emissions compared to cows milk, which was not a blanket statement for all products, but rather specific to an individual item, which the ASA determined could mislead the public.