Emmerdale studio tour advert BANNED by standards bigwigs after being found guilty of ‘misleading fans’
Disgruntled fans complained they had been misled and ITV had exaggerated the experience
ITV has been forced to remove an advert for its Emmerdale studio tour for misleading fans and exaggerating the experience.
The Advertising Standards Agency has banned the ad and ordered the channel it must not appear again in its current form.
The 30-second ad shows a woman being transported from her kitchen to a field, a costume room, and indoor sets from the ITV soap, and finally to the The Woolpack.
A voiceover can be heard saying: "Step into the drama. The Emmerdale Studio Experience."
But the tour actually uses reconstruction sets and not the ones currently being used for filming, prompting fans to complain.
The replica sets are in a studio where interior scenes used to be shot until the majority of filming moved elsewhere.
The ASA said there was a "fantastical element" to the ad and in a statement said: "While we noted that the experiences depicted in the ad were in the main based on different elements of the attraction, we considered that the ad, particularly through the inclusion of the outdoor field location, the scene in which the woman handled costumes and the scene with crew working in the background, implied that visitors would have a more immersive, wide-ranging and dramatic experience than we understood the attraction provided.
"We therefore concluded the ad misleadingly exaggerated the features of the attraction."
In response, ITV said the ad was purposely not a step-by-step guide to what visitors would see, and therefore did not say that visitors would tour the actual sets.
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