Eamonn Holmes & GSK: A celebrity for hire

More on Eamonn Holmes’ promotion of pharma firm GSK’s “Understanding Shingles” campaign and associated website, understandingshingles.co.uk (see previous post).
For the avoidance of doubt, neither GSK nor Mr Holmes’ management company responded to requests for comment.
I have only just come across a relevant tweet from the TV presenter, that dated 23 September 2021 about shingles and GSK (screen shot in Figure 1).

Mr Holmes, as you can see, labelled his tweet as an ad. Therefore, there is a commercial relationship between GSK and the star.
Which brings me to one of the emails I received from Marian Nicholson, director of the Shingles Support Society (“SSS”), a subgroup of charity Herpes Viruses Association. There Ms Nicholson wrote: “I would suggest that anyone who’s had shingles – as Eamonn has, have you seen the photos? – will not need any financial incentive to help make people ‘shingles aware’!!!”.
She finished: “You won’t find any £££ issues here!”
SSS, by contrast, wasn’t paid by GSK to promote the pharma firm’s “Understanding Shingles” campaign and associated website, understandingshingles.co.uk.
I went back to Ms Nicholson for comment, referring to Mr Holmes’ newly discovered tweet. Both to her and her organisation’s credit, she responded, if only to say in an email: “No comment. I have no insight into the workings of GSK or Eamonn Holmes…”
It therefore appears that Mr Holmes, unlike SSS, wasn’t solely acting for the sake of others. He was a celebrity for hire.
What’s more, the Daily Mirror newspaper omitted to disclose the commercial relationship between GSK and Mr Holmes.

Is GSK paying Eamonn Holmes to promote its shingles campaign?

On 12 October 2021, the Daily Mirror newspaper contained a long interview of Eamonn Holmes, where he talked about his health, including a bout of shingles.
There the TV presenter promoted pharma firm GSK’s “Understanding Shingles” campaign and associated website, understandingshingles.co.uk (screen shot in Figure 1). As you can see, the GSK website bears prominent brand logos.

I asked GSK in emails whether there’s a commercial relationship between the pharma firm and Mr Holmes. It didn’t respond.
Mr Holmes’ management company, too, was a non-responder.
However, Marian Nicholson did reply: she’s director of the Shingles Support Society (“SSS”), a subgroup of charity Herpes Viruses Association. SSS “supports” GSK’s “Understanding Shingles” campaign, according to the article.
Ms Nicholson said SSS hadn’t received any funding from GSK “since around 1988”.
What a pity neither GSK nor Mr Holmes’ management company felt any obligation to be transparent and accountable on the matter of a commercial relationship.

The Portman Group, which describes itself on its website as the “alcohol social responsibility body and regulator of alcohol marketing in the UK”, says its members are “committed” to promoting alcohol only to those aged 18 and over (see 13 May 2020 post).
Heineken, a Portman Group member, proclaims in its UK Twitter biography: “Our content shouldn’t be shared with anyone under the age of 18.” (screen shot in Figure 1)

Meanwhile, two big-name celebrities, Eamonn Holmes and Denise Van Outen, separately promote Heineken on the social media platform. Both are TV stars whose programmes are for families. Therefore, under-18s will follow both on Twitter.
It’s bad enough both celebrities promote Heineken to under-18s this way.
Worse, Mr Holmes failed to label his posts as ads. In other words, his tweets were undisclosed marketing communications from the alcohol company (see 14 October 2020 post).
Further, I don’t believe Ms Van Outen made very clear her tweet dated 2 February 2021 was an ad (screen shot in Figure 2).

Yes, the star says she’s “teamed up with” Heineken as part of its “#brewinggoodcheer” campaign. Nevertheless Ms Van Outen claims to be “celebrating the great British pub”, which is obviously not specific to Heineken. In other words, her tweet is ambiguous.
Something that is clear, though: Heineken’s exhortation for its content not to be shared with under-18s is meaningless.
Heineken didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Broadcaster Eamonn Holmes plugged alcohol company Heineken on social media, without disclosure of interest.
Mr Holmes was paid to promote Heineken at the time of his posts.

On 18 November 2019, the alcohol company announced on its website launch of its weekly “A Pint with Eamonn and the Gaffers” podcast (screen shot in Figure 1). Each episode the broadcaster interviews a well-known football manager in a different Heineken pub, where the pair drink the beer. The alcohol firm’s official YouTube channel hosts many videos derived from the beery interviews (screen shot in Figure 2).

It’s disappointing the Heineken UK YouTube channel isn’t age-restricted (at date of publication). In other words, under-18s can access the content it publishes on the video-sharing platform. Heineken could easily age-restrict its content, of course. It chooses not to.
Yet alcohol is supposed to be marketed in the UK only to those aged 18 and over.
The broadcaster has 1m Twitter followers (@EamonnHolmes).
There, in November and December 2019, Mr Holmes promoted the podcast, without disclosure of interest. The tweets are unclear and misleading: none is clearly identifiable as an ad. Mr Holmes omitted to use the hashtag #ad.
Here I show six tweets (screen shots in Figure 3-8). For the avoidance of doubt, this is a selection of Mr Holmes’ problematic Heineken tweets, not all of them.

All the tweets include a photo or video prominently showing Heineken – both the brand logo and beer.
His tweets, too, are accessible to under-18s (at date of publication).
“A Pint with Eamonn and the Gaffers” is produced by podcast production company 11-29 Media Limited (screen shot in Figure 9). Mr Holmes is a shareholder in the firm, according to Companies House records.

The broadcaster now calls his podcast simply “Eamonn and the Gaffers”, as his Twitter biography attests (screen shot in Figure 10).