United Kingdom

A website for Apollo Vapes UK, an e-cigarette brand, featured a page titled “Affiliate Program”. The webpage featured linked text that individuals could click to enter their details to become an online affiliate. It also set out the benefits of becoming an affiliate which included the money they could make, receiving a unique URL to track sales, as well as banners and images provided by Apollo to add to the affiliate websites. The webpage stated, “If you have a website (or other online marketing channels) that can help promote Apollo products and send traffic to our website, you can use your website to indirectly generate sales”. 

The ASA challenged whether the ad breached the CAP Code by irresponsibly encouraging the promotion of e-cigarettes and related components online, because unlicensed nicotine-containing e-liquids and their components could not be promoted in online media.

Apollo Future Technology Ltd t/a Apollo Vapes UK said they had removed the affiliate page from their website. They said their UK affiliate programme in the UK worked with product review websites, which were for adult vape users. They reviewed products and ranked them. They did not believe they breached UK regulations by allowing those sites to review their products but would stop working with them if that was the case.

The ASA considered the reference to “other online marketing channels” to include social media and therefore the ad encouraged people to become Apollo Affiliates, who in turn would promote the sale of e-cigarettes and their components on the advertiser’s behalf on social media. Consequently, the restriction that applied to online media was applicable. Thus, the ad had the indirect effect of promoting the sale of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and their components, which were not licensed as medicines in online media, by means of the affiliate programme. By encouraging people to promote the sale of such products on social media, the ad incited prospective affiliates to breach the CAP Code.