Smalley’s image hijacked for online weight loss endorsement

Remember the unfortunate guy who unwittingly became a spokesman for a particular brand of lubricant on Facebook last year? Now telly presenter Rachel Smalley is battling Facebook herself in an effort to get a photo of her used in a weight loss advertisement taken off Facebook.

Apparently the image in question was lifted from a piece that ran in the NZ Woman’s Weekly, making the whole enterprise doubly dubious.

Smalley has been tweeting about her journey to get her picture removed from the ad, which has so far been protracted and fruitless (“Can’t believe I’m trying to fix the problem myself. Surprised corporates aren’t more prepared for this type of fraud”).

This dodginess follows on from a decision by the ASA about bait and switch advertising tactics online used by some of the daily deal peddlers. 

• This story originally appeared on idealog.co.nz.