Mark Palmer calls for bans on ‘brand-washing’ ads by firms that repeatedly fail customers

Mark Palmer, founder of Maverick Planet and a campaigner against what he calls ‘brand enshittification’, argues that businesses which regulators have found, time and again, to have let customers down should face bans on what he terms ‘brand-washing’ advertising.

Palmer contends that large brands spend millions promoting trust while customers’ experiences tell a different story, and that the advertising industry should stop judging brand ads in isolation from that reality.

Thames Water

He begins with the case of Adam, a teacher and Thames Water customer who found during a routine check of his accounts that the company had taken £145,562 from his bank account.

Thames let him speak to a chatbot, which told him the next payment would correct the error. He then contacted his bank and the media, and the matter was eventually resolved, which Palmer credits to the customer’s persistence.

A Thames Water spokesperson said: “We apologize unreservedly to Mr Bainbridge and his family. This was the result of human error originating from an incorrect meter reading.” The company said the money had been returned, that it had spoken to him to apologise, that it was introducing additional checks to prevent a repeat, and that it had offered him a gesture of goodwill.

Palmer describes such responses as polite, weasel-worded apologies that customers often receive after battling chatbots and call centre scripts. In his experience, companies typically do not fix problems or compensate fairly, and instead point customers to the regulator, leading to weeks of waiting and form-filling. He argues the effect is a system that wears people down until they give up.

He sets out figures for the water sector. Ofwat regulates water companies in the UK, while the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) independently represents water and wastewater customers, and can take up complaints still unresolved after eight weeks. In 2025–26, household complaints made directly to water companies rose by 56%, and those escalated to CCW rose by a record 84%, both from a high base.

He notes that the Channel 4 docudrama ‘Dirty Business’ explored the scandal over sewage pollution and the alleged shortcomings in oversight, with Thames Water at the centre of that debate.

Palmer, who says he is a Thames Water customer, reports that his road is on its sixth badly repaired leak, and that one leak running down the street continued for three months while his bills kept rising. As a local monopoly, Thames cannot be swapped for another supplier.

Even so, he points out, the company has run a marketing campaign while leaks and pollution persist. One ad states: “At Thames Water we know we have a way to go. That’s why we are investing over £6bn to improve river health. All part of our biggest upgrade in 150 years.”

Palmer questions who polluted the rivers originally, why a company that has been private since 1989 has taken so long to make this investment, and how money was spent in the meantime. He cites years of shareholder payouts and growing debt, and Ofwat’s ruling in May 2025 that dividends Thames paid in 2023 and 2024 to its holding company broke the rules.

He also asks why a business customers cannot leave is spending on advertising at all. In his view, this is brand washing at a time when it is unclear who will own the company in future, with state control among the possibilities.

What he means by enshittification

Palmer defines enshittification as the steady deterioration of what a business offers, frequently its service or digital platform. In his account, the company moves cynically from serving the customer values it claims towards maximising short-term profit for shareholders, relying on the inertia and hassle of customers leaving or seeking redress. Such companies, he says, often claim values like “integrity”, “customer focused” or “trust”, and spend heavily on advertising to appear friendly, cool or trusted.

In his view, it is no longer enough for the industry to ask narrowly whether an ad is legal, decent, honest and truthful if regulators’ findings and customers’ experiences suggest otherwise. Regulating businesses has not worked, he writes, whereas stopping them advertising until they improve could.

British Airways

Palmer says British Airways’ ads are widely liked, but in his view they shield the brand from the reality of customer experience. One recent campaign presents a BA flight as a way to reduce stress.

He describes what he calls a horrendous experience on a BA business flight between Edinburgh and London, not his first. He posted about it on LinkedIn and tagged the airline, which did not reply, though many others responded with similar stories. He ended up taking a seven-hour train journey home.

When things go wrong, he says, there is rarely anyone to speak to at an airport, cancelled passengers can be pushed towards emails or messages they cannot reply to, and complaints go round in circles on the website before a minimal reply arrives, sometimes with Avios points.

He cites Trustpilot, where around 16,600 ratings gave BA an average score of 1.6 out of 5 when he wrote the piece. He also points to Civil Aviation Authority figures covering complaints taken to the two principal independent UK adjudicators in the 12 months to October 2025, which show BA accounted for most payouts. Customers won 81% of the 10,679 complaints brought against the airline, and BA paid out £6.9m to passengers after initially turning down or failing to resolve their claims.

Virgin Media

Virgin Media, one of the UK’s largest broadband and TV providers, promotes its fast broadband in ads starring hang-gliding goats, a speedboat-driving walrus and an elephant at the wheel of a truck.

Palmer notes its Trustpilot score of about 2 out of 5 from over 100,000 reviews. Ofcom fined the company £28m in July 2026 for repeatedly stopping customers from ending their contracts.

Among the tactics the regulator identified were agents deliberately ending calls and putting customers on hold “for no reason”. It also said millions of customer calls were “likely mishandled” over a three-year period. Palmer questions how the company can still spend heavily on brand advertising.

Meta

Palmer argues that Meta, too, games its values while degrading its service, pointing to what feels like a new court battle or regulatory incident almost every month.

A New Mexico court ruled in August 2026 that Meta’s platforms were a public nuisance affecting children, ordering it to pay $567m and make changes. In the UK, Ofcom is looking into whether Meta broke its online safety obligations with the launch of its “Instants” feature on Instagram.

Meta recently ran a brand commercial with the line “The future is for everyone”, which says “Call us optimists” and “Just as we’ve always done, we’re betting on people”. Palmer finds that optimism hard to reconcile with the New Mexico ruling.

He argues regulators are not doing enough, since lengthy court cases and fines can be treated as bumps in the road. In Q2 2026 Meta booked a $2.4bn charge for legal proceedings, while revenue climbed 28% to over $60bn. He accepts it is open to debate whether stopping Meta advertising itself would have any effect, but it would send a strong signal.

Lloyds

Palmer has previously tried to get the ASA to ban a Lloyds Bank ad. In 2018 he briefed on independent ComRes research, funded by the litigation funder Therium for Noel Edmonds. Most respondents thought Lloyds should stop using “By Your Side” in its black horse ads.

A complaint was lodged with the ASA by Keystone Law, acting for Edmonds and other victims of the historic HBOS Reading fraud. The ASA decided that year that Lloyds could continue using the line, calling it “advertising puffery” that would not be taken literally by consumers. Lloyds Banking Group reached a private compensation agreement with Edmonds in July 2019 and formally apologised for the distress caused.

Palmer also points to Lloyds’ part in the mis-selling of PPI. The FCA imposed a £117m fine on it in 2015 over its unfair handling of PPI complaints, having found that staff were instructed in internal guidance to presume the bank’s sales practices were compliant, even though failings were known.

In the second half of 2025, Lloyds Banking Group received more complaints than any other UK financial services group, with 187,516 recorded. By June 2026 it had put aside £1.95bn to cover potential motor finance redress, and in March 2026 a banking app glitch showed some Lloyds group app users other customers’ transaction information.

The group lists “Trusting each other” among its values and now runs ads with the line “Bank on Lloyds”. Palmer asks how it reconciles that value with customers’ experience.

A public vote on ads

Across a water monopoly, a legacy airline, a telecoms provider, a tech giant and a high-street bank, Palmer sees a gap between brand promise and customer experience that is hard to ignore. Serious failings have been found by regulators and exposed by television investigations, and independent adjudicators have frequently ruled for customers.

When penalties can be absorbed as an operating cost and brands can keep sheltering behind multimillion-pound advertising, he argues it is time for a different approach.

His proposal is that brand ads from businesses with a record of regulatory findings against them should be put to the public, which would require a change to the ASA’s rules. If most people decided an ad should be banned, the ban should run for a minimum of one year, and continue until the business demonstrates it has dealt with its customer service failures and the gap with its stated values.

He returns to the Lloyds case, arguing that by 2018 regulators’ findings and complaints already showed clearly that the bank had let customers down, and a ComRes survey suggesting the public wanted the ads banned. Customers and trust in advertising, he suggests, would have been better served had those ads not been dismissed as puffery.