After a recent lecture regarding Ad regulation, we were shown a selection of campaigns that caused controversy and consequently led to being banned. It became obvious that there’s a fine line between when an ad is unacceptable and when it’s reasonable but controversial. Legalities apply to advertising, as we became especially aware of when looking at alcohol ads. Even though set rules are in place for the masses, some campaigns need to be focused on as individuals, for examples this applies to the infamous ‘Hello Boys’ Wonderbra advert. Was the amount of flesh on show acceptable? At the time (1994) this campaign was contentious, however what saved it was that it was clever, ‘Hello Boys’ was a humorous tagline when accompanied with the image. The most recent Wonderbra ads have caused outrage being to blame for car accidents as the billboards are too much of a distraction to drivers. If a woman is in her underwear on an ad just for the sake of it and with no apparent reason the reaction would be very different. The Wonderbra ads really set the benchmark for how much you could bare on a public poster, now perfume & fashion ads have followed suit and we barely bat an eyelash.
Some would say this has become a problem with society and we’re now de-sensitized to a lot of things that would previously shock, this can become a major problem when children are involved, are these ads providing a false sense of self-image to young girls of what they’re meant to look like or what they’re meant to wear? Celebrity culture is partly to blame, new scandals appear regularly about a ‘photoshop’ mishap or an enhanced version of a recognised figure backfiring, see the Julia Roberts/Lancome outrage.
The ASA subsequently banned these ads for ‘Abuse of Photoshop’. Her face had clearly been airbrushed so much that her features almost seemed to disappear and were replaced by a cyborg hyper-skinned version of herself. The argument was that it was misleading, Lancome were essentially trying to convey that this makeup could perform miracles by erasing any sign of human form in the face (pigment, wrinkles, contour lines), ASA pulled the ads as they didn’t ‘reflect reality’, but do we want to see reality in our advertisements? We see it everyday around us, when flipping through a magazine such as Vogue (where beauty ads are rife) do we really want to see those we consider ‘the beautiful’ as they really are, or do we want to escape to an alternate otherwordly beauty reality where results are so unobtainable, it sets us apart from them even more?
I recently stumbled across an article on Independent online titled ‘Ten adverts that shocked the world’.
‘Advertising is a world in which the normal is beautified, cracks are airbrushed over and real-life is portrayed with rose tinted glasses. And all with the intention of getting the consumers to buy into such ideals.’
Their examples are at the extreme side of advertising and show how ruthless and disregarding of morality advertisers can be. When will the ‘shock’ culture reach its limit? Advertisers seem to be pushing the boundaries with each new campaign and with the next generation being raised on the World Wide Web is it becoming harder to cause a reaction by using startling visuals? & will the ASA rules eventually be relaxed in order to meet the level that we demand from our adverts?
