National Advertising Division Recommends Promotion in Motion Discontinue or Modify Certain Welch’s Fruit Snack Commercials

New York, NY – September 30, 2024 – In a Fast-Track SWIFT challenge brought by General Mills, Inc., BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division recommended that Promotion In Motion, Inc. (PIM Brands) discontinue certain television commercials for its Welch’s Fruit Snacks or modify the advertising to avoid conveying the message that competing fruit snacks are worthless.

General Mills, the manufacturer of competing fruit-flavored snack products, including the Annie’s and Mott’s brands, challenged a series of television commercials for Welch’s Fruit Snacks featuring celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay as Welch’s Fruit Snacks CFO (i.e., Chief Fruit Officer). 

Fast-Track SWIFT is an expedited process designed for single-issue advertising cases brought to the National Advertising Division (NAD). At issue for NAD was whether the challenged advertising reasonably communicates an unsupported disparaging message that competing fruit-flavored snacks are worthless.

NAD determined that one reasonable takeaway from the commercials is that the whole fruit content of Welch’s Fruit Snacks makes it a superior product for consumers. However, NAD also found that certain elements of the commercials go further and portray competing fruit snacks as worthless. Specifically, NAD found that Ramsay throwing the products out of the window, kicking the products into a lobster tank, and spitting out the products constitutes “ash canning,” depicting competing products like General Mills’ fruit snacks as lacking any positive value. 

Therefore, NAD recommended that PIM Brands discontinue the challenged advertising or, in the alternative, modify the advertising to avoid conveying the message that competing fruit snacks are worthless. NAD noted that nothing in its decision precludes PIM Brands from making truthful and not misleading claims about the qualities of its own fruit snack products, either monadically or in comparison to competing fruit snack products.

In its advertiser statement, PIM Brands stated that it “will comply with NAD’s recommendations,” but noted its disagreement with NAD about aspects of the television commercials. 

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