Skins seeks closure on misleading advertising case

Tim Burrowes

January 22, 2009 10:39

skins An embarassing episode is nearing an end for sports company Skins with the publication today of an advertisement confessing to the Australian marketing industry that it had engaged in unlawful conduct.

The brand’s print and radio advertising had claimed: “We don’t pay sports stars to wear our product. They pay us.”

But the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission gathered evidence that the company had paid a number of athletes to endorse the product and took Skins to the Federal Court. The sports stars included cricketer Brett Lee, along with the Western Bulldogs, St Kilda and Melbourne Football Clubs, the Wests Tigers rugby league club and rugby union club The Waratahs. The brand spent a total of well over a million dollars on endorsements and free products.

Last month, Skins was fined $120,000 and ordered in the ruling to place the advertisement in B&T, to broadcast one on SBS, which went out at the start of the year, and to put a message on its own website.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.