Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Oh nuts...

The new Snickers ad has been banned for being offensive (supposedly) to gay people. Sure I understand where its coming from, the dialogue has a couple of lines that might be construed as dodgy. Yet at no point is there an actual reference to sexuality, people are just reading far too much into things.

But there are countless other ads that have the exact same 'real man' message, McCoys crisps for just one example; and no one seems to care about them. So what is it that makes ad worse?

Well it isn't the production, the over the top destruction and comic gun firing are as good as the first ad; and the concept of trying to speedwalk away from danger is funny.

And the best irony of all, this ad is by the same agency that did the Heinz ad that was banned featuring two guys kissing.

1 comment:

Robert said...

Funny how the advertising standards people don't find ads that show men - or more specifically fathers - looking like sad, stupid twats offensive.

[It goes without saying that women have suffered from stereotyping for years, especially now with 'lad brand' ads]

No, don't worry, I'm not turning into some Daily Mail reader - I'm just trying to highlight there seems little consistency in what is and isn't banned these days, other than how many people in middle england it offends ... of which, lets face it, homosexuality is up there with the Nazi's.

Adland can't operate under the protection of freedom-of-speech because our commercial objectives could encourage blatant misuse of this ... however you either ban ALL communication that humiliates/ridicules/undermines the beliefs of specific groups in society [excluding bigots and racists obviously :) ] or you don't otherwise we are heading back into Mary Whitehouse territory and that is even more dangerous.

As for this ad? I just find it sad and a desperate attempt for attention, a bit like the kid at school who claimed he'd seen PORKIES but didn't have anything interesting to say about it.

Actually that's a crap analogy [did Porkies have anything interesting in it? And you're all probably too young to think of porkies as anything other than 'lies' or 'sausages'] but hopefully you get the idea.