MirrorCasino.com, the Daily Mirror’s online gambling site, recently ran ads in the paper promoting a £5 free play offer.
However, the ASA confirmed it had received complaints on the ad as it featured the image of popular kid’s toy, the Optimus Prime Transformer, which many felt made the ad appealing to children.
Trinity Mirror, the parent company of the Daily Mirror, responded to suggestions of irresponsible marketing, saying that the image was licensed and used because one of the games on MirrorCasino was Transformers-branded, adding that it was not targeted at under-18s and that the ad only appeared in the Money section of the newspaper.
The ASA said that the ad did break the broadcasting code, which states that ads for gambling should not be of particular appeal to children or young people: "We considered that the depiction of the popular comic book character was likely to have particular appeal to children and young people, regardless of the context in which it appeared and therefore concluded that the ad breached the [advertising] code."