Adverts for nutrition brands Zoe and Huel featuring Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett have been banned for failing to disclose their commercial relationship with the celebrity entrepreneur. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found the ads, seen on Facebook in February, “omitted material information” about their links to Bartlett, who published the best-selling book The Diary Of A CEO – 33 Laws For Business And Life and hosted the podcast The Diary Of A CEO. Bartlett is an investor in Zoe and a director at Huel.
The ASA found the two adverts for Huel and one for Zoe were misleading or likely to mislead consumers. The advert for Zoe, which offers health testing and dietary advice services, featured an image of Bartlett with a Zoe patch on his arm, with text in the form of a quote from Bartlett which stated: “If you haven’t tried Zoe yet, give it a shot. It might just change your life.
” An advert for nutrition brand Zoe featuring Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett. (Advertising Standards Authority/PA Wire) Zoe said that if it was obliged to include a specific disclosure about the nature of Bartlett’s status as an investor in Zoe, this would have a wider impact on other brands and influencers. Huel, known for its vitamin-enriched food items – whose ads featured Bartlett stating that its Daily Greens powder was the “best product” it had released, argued that consumers had no doubt about the existence of such commercial relationships when they saw the .