Background
Summary of Council decision:
Two issues were investigated, both of which were Upheld.
Ad description
A paid-for Facebook ad for Kollo Health, seen on 26 April 2023, stated, “You will love [heart emoji] Kollo Premium Liquid Collagen: The secret to radiant, youthful-looking skin! … Kollo 10,000 mg liquid marine collagen is a muti [sic] award winning supplement designed to support your body’s collagen production. By taking it daily, you can help maintain the elasticity and firmness of your skin, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles for a more youthful and radiant complexion …”. A link led to customer reviews.
An embedded video featured a presenter discussing the product. They referred to the product appearing on ITV and stated, “There are so many amazing reasons why you should take a daily dose of collagen, whether … that’s to notice your skin being more hydrated, stronger nails, thicker hair or improved joint health … Ten grams of premium marine collagen in every single sachet … and that’s because that’s the optimum amount that you need to notice a difference, to feel the benefits, to experience a visible change … this is taken from independent clinical studies with proven results and all those results and studies … are available for you to have a look at kollohealth.com. We also have liquid marine collagen because marine collagen contains amino acids and glycine which is great for skin health and also marine collagen is brilliant at stimulating the production of elastin which we know makes the skin look more youthful and also helps iron out all those wrinkles …”
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claims:
1. “help maintain the elasticity and firmness of your skin”, “reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles” and “thicker hair” were misleading and could be substantiated; and
2. “your skin being more hydrated”, “stronger nails” and “improved joint health" complied with the Code.
Response
1. Kollo Health Ltd said they had removed the ad for the duration of the ASA investigation. They believed the ad complied with the Code but indicated their willingness to make any necessary changes. They said the presenter of the video was referring to collagen in general rather than making any specific claims about their product. Kollo explained that each sachet of their product contained 10 g of Naticol marine collagen. Naticol had undergone various clinical trials on humans. Kollo provided documentation which they believed substantiated the claims.
2. Kollo explained that they had been unaware of the requirement for health claims in advertising to be authorised on the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register (the GB register) and said they would consult it in future to ensure their advertising complied.
Assessment
1. Upheld
The CAP Code required that only health claims authorised on the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register (the GB Register) were permitted in marketing communications for foods. The CAP Code defined health claims as those that stated, suggested or implied a relationship between a food, or ingredient, and health.
The ASA understood that the function of skin was to provide a permeable barrier against the external environment. We considered that claims which stated or implied a beneficial physiological effect on, or change to, the structure of the skin to aid in its function of providing a barrier were health claims for the purposes of the Code. In contrast, claims which related to temporary improvements in the appearance or maintenance of normal appearance of the skin and did not refer to a beneficial physiological effect on a specific function of skin were, therefore, cosmetic claims, rather than health claims. Cosmetic claims were not required to be authorised on the GB Register; instead, advertisers must hold evidence to support such claims. We considered that assessing whether claims were health claims or cosmetic claims required an assessment of the specific claims made and the overall context of the ad.
Although Kollo believed that the video portion of the ad made claims for collagen in general, in the introductory section the presenter mentioned Kollo by name and was shown holding the product. We therefore considered that consumers would understand that the claims related to the product.We considered that the claims "help maintain the elasticity and firmness of your skin” and “reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles” were likely to be understood by consumers as cosmetic claims about the product’s temporary beneficial effect on the appearance of skin, specifically in improving its texture and reducing the appearance of wrinkles. We also considered that in the context of an ad that did not refer to hair growth or prevention of hair loss, consumers would be likely to interpret the claim "thicker hair" as a cosmetic claim that the product could lead to hair which appeared plumped or thicker in diameter rather than an increase in the number of hair strands on the head.
We therefore assessed the evidence provided by Kollo in support of the cosmetic claims in the ad: “help maintain the elasticity and firmness of your skin”, “reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles” and “thicker hair”.
A consumer panel study evaluated the effect of a daily 10 g dose of Naticol on 52 female participants from the Tokyo area in Japan over 30 days. Participants were asked to self-evaluate wrinkles, skin hydration, firmness and brightness after two and four weeks. We considered that subjective responses to a consumer perception questionnaire did not constitute adequate evidence for the objective claims in the ad. We also had concerns that the survey cohort was small and of a limited demographic that was not representative of the general population.
A double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomised clinical study carried out by a French laboratory assessed 40 female subjects aged between 54 and 64 years. Twenty randomly assigned participants took 10g Naticol daily for 12 weeks (the “intervention group”). The other 20 participants were given a placebo of maltodextrin (the “placebo group”). The trial measured skin elasticity at the start and end of the trial period using a cutometer and assessed wrinkles after 6 and 12 weeks by using specialised software to analyse rubber impressions taken of the skin. Participants and investigators were also questioned about perceived wrinkle reduction and whether they thought the product was effective against signs of aging. The study reported a significant increase in skin smoothing (9.37%) in the periorbital zone and in skin extensibility (23.7%) in the intervention group compared to the placebo group. The survey of participants and investigators reported perceived wrinkle reduction in 79% of the intervention group compared to 58% in the placebo group. However, we considered that 20 participants in the intervention group and 20 in the control group did not constitute a sufficiently large sample size. We also had concerns that the study cohort, made up of female participants between 54 and 64 years of age was not representative of the general population and the study had not been published or peer-reviewed. Furthermore, we noted one of the inclusion criteria for the participants was for them to have “periorbital lines of medium to moderate severity corresponding at least to level 3 of the classification of Lemperle”. We understood the Lemperle scale defined level 3 as “Moderately deep wrinkles”. We considered that a study that measured effects on moderate lines would not necessarily be relevant to substantiate an efficacy claim for “fine lines and wrinkles”.
Three further studies evaluated the effects of Naticol. In two of the studies participants took a 2.5 g dose and in the third they took a 5 g dose. We considered that those studies were not relevant to the advertised claims because they did not relate to the advertised 10 mg dose. We also considered that a summary of an in vitro study of collagen synthesis was not relevant substantiation for the claims.
Kollo did not provide any evidence in support of the claim “thicker hair”.For those reasons, we concluded that the claims “help maintain the elasticity and firmness of your skin”, “reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles” and “thicker hair” had not been substantiated and were therefore misleading.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 12.1 (Medicines, medical devices, health-related products and beauty products).
2. Upheld
We considered that the claim “your skin being more hydrated” would be understood to mean that the product would have a beneficial physiological effect on the skin’s function as a barrier, in particular by protecting it against dehydration. Similarly, we considered that the claim “stronger nails” would be understood to mean that the product would alter the physical structure of a person’s nails so as to make them stronger and less susceptible to breakage. We therefore considered that the claims were specific health claims for the purposes of the Code.
Specific health claims used in ads must be authorised on the GB Register, and could only be made for the nutrient, substance, food or food category for which they had been authorised. However, we had not seen evidence that the above claims were authorised on the GB Register in relation to either collagen or the Kollo product.
We considered that the claim “improved joint health” would be understood to mean the product had a general beneficial effect on the joints. The Code required that general health claims, which were claims that referred to the general benefits of a nutrient or food for overall good health or health related well-being, must be accompanied by a specific authorised health claim. However, the claim was not accompanied by any relevant, specific authorised health claim as was required.
Because we had not seen any evidence that the specific health claims (“your skin being more hydrated” and “stronger nails”) were authorised on the GB Register and the general health claim (“improved joint health”) was not accompanied by a specific authorised health claim, we concluded that they breached the Code.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 15.1, 15.1.1, 15.2 (Foods, food supplements and associated health and nutrition claims) and 15.7 (Foods, food supplements and other vitamins and minerals).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Kollo Health Ltd not to state or imply that their product could maintain the elasticity and firmness of the skin, reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles or lead to thicker hair unless they held robust evidence to substantiate the claims. We also told them to ensure that, in future, their ads did not contain general health claims that were unaccompanied by an authorised specific health claim or unauthorised specific health claims.
BCAP Code
3.1 3.7 12.1 15.7 15.1 15.2 15.1.1
CAP Code (Edition 12)
3.1 3.7 12.1 15.7 15.1 15.2 15.1.1
