Cadbury among brands whose ads were banned for marketing to children

Cadbury is one of the brands whose ads have been banned for marketing their products to children.

The chocolate confectioner broke rules around marketing to children according to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), for having materials aimed at children during their Easter campaign.

Cadbury had a partnership with National Trust for Scotland, and while the campaign wasn't considered to be breaking the rules, the activity pack and a storybook titled ‘The Tale of the Great Easter Bunny' did.

Cadbury's activity pack was banned (Credit: Cadbury)

Chewits were also considered to have broken the rules, because of the character 'Chewie the Chewitsaurus’, promoted on their Facebook page.

Some of the posts focused on themes that appeal to children, including Roald Dahl, 'back to school' and GCSE results.

Squashies also had one of their adverts banned - the advergame app called ‘Squashies World’ promoting Swizzels.

The bans come after new rules were introduced in July 2017, aimed at stopping companies from targeting junk foods at children online.

Explaining why the ads were banned, the ASA said in these instances 'insufficient care was taken to direct the content away from under-16s'.

Responding to the ban, a Cadbury spokesperson told HuffPost UK that they will take ASA's views on board and apply them to future content, as they take not to marketing 'directly to young people very seriously'.

Jeremy Dee, managing director at Swizzels, also spoke to HuffPost UK about the ban: 'All routes to access the app clearly state that visitors must be over 16 years of age to view the page and age gates are in place to restrict access. Visitors must enter their date of birth at two separate stages before playing the game, which is actually stricter than alcohol websites.'

A spokesperson for the brand that owns Chewits, also responded to the ban, saying that the campaign was in no way aimed at under-16s.

'At no time was the campaign, which has now ended, developed to target under-16s. Rather it was aimed at parents and young adults with its core messages and placement focusing on these groups.

'To prevent any further confusion we have deleted all possible and questionable posts we’ve published in the past.'