Two regimes over the same words
A claim printed on a sun protection pack is governed by cosmetics law: it must be truthful, supported by adequate and verifiable evidence and consistent with the common criteria for cosmetic claims. The same claim in an advertisement is governed by that and by the advertising codes as well.
The codes are written by the Committee of Advertising Practice and administered by the Advertising Standards Authority, with the non broadcast code covering packaging where it is used in a marketing communication, retail listings, websites, email, social media and paid placement, and the broadcast code covering television and radio.
The distinction matters because the advertising test is broader. Cosmetics law asks whether the claim is supported. The codes ask what impression the whole communication creates.
Impression, not wording
The central principle is that marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so, and that the assessment is of the communication as a whole. That includes what is shown as well as what is said, what is emphasised, what is placed in small type, and what is omitted.
For a sun protection advertisement, several consequences follow directly.
Imagery carries claims. Depicting sustained exposure with no reapplication, or a single application followed by a day of activity, can convey a duration claim that the copy never makes. That is the same claim examined in all day protection and once a day claims, arriving through pictures rather than words.
Emphasis carries claims. A very large numeral with the conditions in small type conveys a level of assurance the measurement does not support. Prominence is part of the impression.
Omission carries claims. Leaving out a significant condition, such as the need to reapply after swimming and towel drying, can render an otherwise accurate communication misleading.
Substantiation held before publication
The codes require that objective claims are capable of substantiation and that documentary evidence is held before a claim is made. This is stricter than it sounds in two respects.
First, the evidence must support the claim as consumers will understand it, not a narrower technical proposition. Evidence about an ingredient does not support a claim about a finished product. Evidence of testing does not support a claim of proof.
Second, the evidence must exist at the time of publication. Assembling it after a complaint is not the same as holding it, and the sequencing is part of the requirement.
Comparatives and superlatives
Comparative claims must compare like with like and must be capable of substantiation against the comparison actually made. In sun protection the recurring difficulty is that the obvious comparisons are between quantities that behave differently from how they read: a higher factor is a smaller fraction transmitted, not a proportionally larger benefit, as set out in why SPF and protection are not proportional.
Superlatives such as the best protection, the highest protection available or the most advanced require substantiation for the superlative itself. Where a superlative refers to a defined and verifiable characteristic, it can be supported. Where it refers to a subjective quality, it may be treated as puffery, and the boundary between the two is not always where an advertiser assumes it is.
Where an advertisement drifts into health claims
The advertising codes contain a section covering medicines, medical devices, health related products and beauty products, and sun protection advertising sits close to its boundary.
Claims about preventing disease are the clear case, and they raise a classification question as well as a code question: a product presented as preventing or treating disease may fall within the definition of a medicinal product, which is assessed on presentation as much as on composition. The MHRA publishes guidance on that determination.
Claims about skin ageing sit in a different place. They are a common feature of sun protection advertising and they require evidence about the claim as made, over the period claimed, for the finished product.
Claims that discourage a person from seeking medical advice, or that could be read as reassurance about a symptom, are the ones the codes treat most seriously in this area. A sun protection advertisement has no business going near them, and this publication does not either.
| On the pack | In an advertisement | |
|---|---|---|
| Governing rules | Retained cosmetics regulation and the common criteria for claims | Those, plus the CAP or BCAP code |
| Test applied | Truthful, supported by evidence held | Not misleading in the impression created as a whole |
| Imagery considered | Artwork as part of the claim | Yes, explicitly, including implication |
| Who assesses | Enforcement authorities on the cosmetics regime | The Advertising Standards Authority |
| Outcome published | Not generally | Rulings are published |
Framework of this publication. It describes how published rules and guidance fit together and is not a measurement, a survey or a study.
Social media, affiliates and the people advertising on your behalf
The codes apply to marketing communications regardless of who publishes them. Content produced by a creator under a commercial arrangement with a brand is advertising, must be identifiable as such, and is subject to the same rules on misleading claims and substantiation.
The practical exposure for a sun protection brand is that a creator describing a product in ordinary speech is very likely to use the vocabulary this publication is about: sunblock, waterproof, all day. Those are the words people use. Under the codes, the brand does not escape responsibility because it did not write the script.
The same applies to retail listings written by third party sellers, to marketplace copy and to affiliate content. The words in them are claims, and somebody is responsible for them.
The listing nobody wrote on purpose
A large share of sun protection copy reaching consumers is not written by the manufacturer at all. Marketplace listings, retailer category pages, comparison sites, price aggregators and search advertising all describe products, often in words assembled from feeds, templates and whatever the person filling in the form thought the product was.
This is where discouraged vocabulary concentrates. A pack that carefully avoids the word sunblock is routinely listed under it, because the listing is written against how people search rather than against how the product is labelled. The same applies to waterproof, which appears in listings for products whose packs correctly say water resistant.
Under the advertising codes these are marketing communications, and the question of who is responsible for them is a real one rather than an academic one. A manufacturer supplying product data has some control over the words in a feed. A retailer writing its own copy has more. Neither is relieved of responsibility by the fact that the words were convenient.
For anyone auditing a brand's claim exposure, the pack is the easy part. The listings are where the discouraged wording actually lives, and they are the part almost nobody checks.
Reading published rulings
The Advertising Standards Authority publishes its rulings, which makes this an unusually transparent area of regulation. For anyone drafting sun protection copy, published rulings are more instructive than the code text alone, because they show how the impression test is applied to specific wording and specific images.
Reading them in volume produces one consistent lesson. The rulings that go against advertisers are rarely about a claim that was false on its face. They are about a claim that was defensible on a narrow reading and misleading on the reading a consumer would actually take.
Seasonal pressure and where it shows
Sun protection advertising is concentrated into a short period, which has a visible effect on the kind of claims that appear. Volume rises, production time falls, copy is reused from previous years, and creative that was signed off under one set of guidance is refreshed rather than rewritten.
The pattern that follows is recognisable in published rulings across seasonal categories. Errors cluster in reused assets, in territory adaptations of central creative, and in retail and affiliate copy produced at speed. They are rarely deliberate and that is not a defence, because the codes require evidence held before publication rather than good intentions.
The useful discipline is unglamorous. Re-check reused copy against current guidance rather than against the fact that it ran before. Check that the claim set on the pack matches the claim set in the advertising. And treat the feed that populates retail listings as advertising copy, because that is what it becomes.
What to take from this
The codes assess what a communication conveys as a whole, including imagery, emphasis and omission. Objective claims need documentary evidence held before publication, supporting the claim as consumers understand it. And an advertisement can carry a prohibited claim without ever printing the word.