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Yorkshire Water used clips of a Russian bar almost 3,000 miles away in an advert for a campaign aimed at locals.
The video was meant to promote saving water in the northern county but viewers quickly noticed things were not quite right.
The ad seemingly shows stock footage of the Malvern Hills in Herefordshire and a bar in the Russian city of Sochi.
Several of the ‘pub’ snippets in the ad can be found on the royalty-free media online shop Pond 5.
They were uploaded in February 2018 and filed under a Russian location with generic titles which begin ‘the barman communicates with a man’ and ‘bartender demonstrates a cocktail’.
On top of this, a man in a left-hand drive car is also featured – BBC Breakfast researchers found this part was shot in Ukraine.
Multiple social media users saw the diver was on the wrong side of the car, a collection of bras hanging over a beam in the bar and a European electric wall plug.
The video showed stock footage of a bar in the Russian city of Sochi (Picture: Yorkshire Water)
The clips can be found on the royalty-free media online shop Pond 5 (Picture: Yorkshire Water)
The video also featured a snippet of a man in a left-hand drive car (Picture: Yorkshire Water)
‘All very Yorkshire and all in 30 seconds,’ environmental campaigner Feargal Sharkey joked.
Yorkshire Water has since removed the advert from all its channels.
A spokesperson said: ‘We recently shared a short teaser video for our new ‘word of mouth’ social media campaign to promote water saving.
‘Unfortunately, it was shared before we’d had a chance to do our normal checks on it and the stock footage that had been used didn’t capture the spirit of Yorkshire.
‘Once we were aware of the mistake we immediately took the video down. The “word of mouth” video series all contain Yorkshire residents talking about their water-saving tips, and footage of our wonderful county.’.
The bar images are sold under genertic bar tender captions (Picture: Pond 5)
Mr Sharkey told the BBC: ‘It underlines the most serious point, once we get past the mild amusement of it all, and that is this laissez-faire, almost casual indifference that water companies, like Yorkshire Water, show towards their customers.’
Last month, Yorkshire Water secured £500 million in investment as the whole water industry tries to deal with its debt.
Water utilities were privatised under Margaret Thatcher in 1989, with the hope that this would drive enough investment to upgrade Britain’s Victorian-era sewage network.
But this has not necessarily happened the way it was intended and, for multiple reasons, companies have ended up borrowing huge sums.
Meanwhile, the non-upgraded systems have seen sewage spills into rivers and the sea become commonplace, along with worrying amounts of leakage.
Water suppliers in England and Wales leaked 51 litres of water per person per day between April 2020 and March 2021, according to the regulator Ofwat.
This is enough to fill more than 1,200 Olympic-size swimming pools every day.
Some campaigners are pushing for nationalisation, with the government holding emergency talks over what to do with Thames Water, which has seen the most issues.
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Several of the bar clips in the ad can be found on a royalty-free media online shop.
