Once again in the storm, Acqua Rocchetta, this time for having promised to prevent kidney stones. Once again, an advertisement from the company misleading.
At least according to what was established by the Control Committee of the Advertising Self-Regulation Institute (IAP), which, with injunction no. 1/25 of 01/07/2025, ordered CoGeDi International Spa, owner of the brand, to cease the advertisement, noted in the weekly Who last October 14, 2024.
For the president of the Control Committee, the clarifications (pursuant to articles 6 and 32 of the Code) provided by the advertiser are not to be considered sufficient and the advertising message “Kidney Stones? It’s time to act! related to “Acqua Rocchetta”is manifestly contrary to the art. 2 – Misleading commercial communication – of the Corporate Governance Code for Commercial Communication.
False advertising
As stated in the IAP injunction, the message opens with a headline in large letters “Kidney stones? It’s time to act!” which links directly, and almost in response to the header, to the large image of the logo “Rocchetta Natural Health Water“, of the bottle of Rocchetta water and the invitation to “Stone prevention month”, thus establishing a direct correlation between the prevention of stones and the consumption of Rocchetta water.
Subsequently, we can even see the indication of various scientific associations that support the initiative, the invitation to book a free online urological consultation and to discover through a QR code the “golden rules of stones to learn how to prevent them every day”.
This communication approach, in the opinion of the Committee, suggests a content that transcends the simple indication of the product advertised as a “sponsor” of a scientific information initiative, accrediting it instead with a specific effectiveness towards the pathology in question. The Committee believes that the public’s perception of the message inevitably leads them to attribute a value to the product quid pluris specific compared to any other water in the prevention of kidney stones, which however is not yet proven. This perception is also amplified in the Committee’s opinion by the references to scientific associations, which emphasize the inappropriate aura of medicalness deriving from the suggestion of the product in question “It’s time to act!” almost as indispensable for the prevention of the problem being communicated.
For Rocchetta mineral water this is the eighth censorship accumulated since 2004, all measures which also include Uliveto mineral water (from the same group) four times.
