Get the Gloss, the health and beauty website, has fallen foul of the UK’s advertising watchdog ASA.
The ASA ruled that Get the Gloss had run a promotion that was not administered fairly, because it used an employee to select a winner without supervision of an independent person, and therefore breached its code.
The promotion, which ran on Instagram in February, gave followers the chance to win a self-care bundle of beauty products from brand Bloom & Blossom.
Get the Gloss asked entrants to tag a friend and follow @getthegloss and @bloomandblossom.
However, it also promised that if entrants shared the giveaway via an Instagram Story, they would qualify for a bonus entry.
A complainant challenged wether sharing a post on an Instagram Story could be tracked properly.
During the investigation, it also transpired that to select the winner, Get the Gloss did not use a computer process or an independent person to produce random results to select the winner.
Instead a Get the Gloss employee used their finger, without looking, to manually select a winner.
Meanwhile, the ASA also identified that it was not possible for Get the Gloss to have awarded any of the eligible entrants bonus entries before selecting a prize winner.
The owner of Get the Gloss, Bellatricks, was ordered to ensure their future promotions were administered fairly and that prizes were awarded to genuine winners in accordance with the laws of chance or by an independent person.
Get the Gloss was also warned not to claim to offer bonus entries if they would not be taken into account when selecting the winner.