The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
Celsius influencers claimed 'fewer calories than an apple' — a $450M hidden-ad suit
A class action says Celsius paid influencers to post 'genuine enthusiasm' for its drinks, burying the paid-promotion disclosure and a false calorie claim.
Celsius Holdings · 2025-04
What happened
In 2025 plaintiff Mariana Dubreu filed a class action against Celsius Holdings and three influencers it worked with — Devon Windsor, Emily Tanner and Erika Wheaton — alleging a scheme to inflate sales through influencer posts that looked like unpaid enthusiasm for the energy-drink brand's products.
The complaint said any paid-promotion disclosures included in the posts were 'buried' or presented in ways that made it almost impossible for a viewer to tell the content was sponsored. It also challenged specific product claims made in the posts, including that a Celsius cocktail had 'fewer calories than an apple' — a comparison the plaintiffs called materially misleading.
The suit brought claims under the FTC Act, California's Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law and Consumers Legal Remedies Act, seeking at least $450 million in damages on the theory that buyers paid a premium for products whose real value was lower than the paid, disguised endorsements had implied.
Why it happened
- A disclosure that is technically present but visually buried satisfies no regulator's intent — it exists to be read, not to exist as a defense if challenged later.
- A specific, checkable nutritional comparison ('fewer calories than an apple') let the campaign claim a hard fact that was false, compounding the disclosure problem with a factual one.
- Working through multiple named influencers spread the same disclosure practice across several accounts, turning one campaign's design choice into a pattern a plaintiff could document across creators.
The lesson
A disclosure has to survive an ordinary scroll, not just exist somewhere in the post. A factual claim inside paid content gets checked twice as hard once the payment itself is in dispute.
Aftermath
The case became one of several 2025 influencer-marketing suits cited across the beverage and consumer-products industry as evidence that buried disclosures, not just missing ones, now draw litigation.
Sources
- InfoLawGroup — Celsius Influencer Lawsuit Reminds Us To Ask: Are You Monitoring Your Influencers?
- Kelley Drye — Lawsuit Turns the Heat up on Celsius Influencer Campaign
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