The advert, which was seen on 30 August 2011, showed images of a young man arriving in a sunny costal destination to attend a catering course and depicted him and a group of young people becoming friends.
Scenes showed them in a variety of situation such as working in the kitchens of a restaurant, playing cards, drinking beer, attending a concert at night, falling in the sea during the day, skinny dipping, jumping off a boat, drinking and dancing on the beach at night.
Wells & Youngs Brewing Company, which markets Estrella Damm in the UK, said the Cinema Advertising Association’s (CAA) Copy Panel had approved the ad. They endorsed the CAA’s response and said the story was "purposefully told" in a way that did not directly associate the beer with activities in which drinking beer would be unsafe and unwise.
The ASA acknowledged that the ad covered activities over an extended period of time, likely to be interpreted by viewers as occurring over several weeks.
However, it noted that the ad featured night scenes in which four people attended a party on the beach and were depicted dancing while holding beer bottles. This scene was immediately followed by the three men rushing towards the sea and jumping into the waves.
The ASA said it: “considered that viewers were likely to interpret those night scenes of dancing, drinking and swimming as being directly chronological, and would understand that they had taken place within the same evening.
"Although we noted that the men were not pictured in deep sea water, we considered that viewers would infer that characters had been drinking alcohol before going swimming at night, which we considered was an unsafe activity for those under the influence of alcohol.”
It added: “We concluded that the ad was irresponsible and ordered that the advert must not appear again in its current form."