Lipton’s ‘Rest in Peach’ ad campaign banned by the ASA
The ASA has decided to ban two social media campaigns from Lipton Iced Tea, which depicted the peach flavour as being discontinued.
The advertisement displayed Peach Lipton Ice Tea cans with white wings and was published on 18 March 2025 on TikTok and Instagram.
The statement written on the social media read: “Rest in Peach. You may have heard that our iconic Peach Lipton Ice Tea flavour is getting discontinued.
“But don’t worry, the rest of your faves are still here to keep you refreshed. And who knows? Maybe one day, Peach will make a legendary comeback. We appreciate your understanding during this period of adjustment and apologise for any inconvenience caused. #RIPeach.”
The move was a marketing campaign as part of an April Fool’s joke; however, it received backlash for the misleading information after revealing it was a joke on 19 March 2025.
A Lipton spokesperson said: “Our campaign was intended as a playful early April Fools’ joke that was not meant to mislead anyone. As soon as we saw it had caused some confusion, we quickly explained our beloved Peach flavour wouldn’t be discontinued.”
Subscribe to Grocery Gazette for free
Sign up here to get the latest grocery and food news each morning
Afterwards an investigation followed when multiple complaints were raised about the post.
However, the ASA decided that the campaign violated the CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.1 (Misleading advertising) by posting misleading information.
The ASA said: “Given the timing of the ads and the lack of clear context to explain or suggest that the ads were a joke, we considered they gave the overall impression that the product was being discontinued when that was not the case, which was likely to affect consumers’ decisions in relation to whether, and in what quantities, to purchase the product.”
Moving forward, Lipton has received instructions not to bring back the ads in the previous format and to avoid advertisements that were overall misleading.
Last week the ASA also banned a Cadbury radio ad due to false nutritional information.
