The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld two complaints against Brewdog over climate claims made in relation to its beer production process.
In an ad taken out in July, the company claimed it was the first ever carbon negative brewery, and that buying its beer would be good for drinkers’ descendants.
“The ASA considered that consumers would understand from the ad that BrewDog was a carbon negative brewery, meaning that, as a business, they had a net effect of removing more carbon from the atmosphere than they emitted,” said the authority in its ruling.
“We considered, within that context, the text ‘Beer for your grandchildren’ reinforced the carbon negative claim.
“However, we considered that there was no information provided in the ad which explained the basis of BrewDog’s ‘carbon negative’ accreditation, or the claim ‘Beer for your grandchildren’.
“Although we acknowledged that the ad referred consumers to a link for the BrewDog website, which contained further information about their carbon reduction and offsetting project, we considered that the ad itself did not include information which explained the basis of the claim.
“Without that information, we considered that consumers would not have sufficient information to understand the basis of the environmental claims in the ad.”
The ruling was criticised by BrewDog chief executive on social media, saying: “You can all sleep more soundly now, knowing that the ASA is protecting you from insufficiently extensive carbon accounting data in your Insta feed.”
