Advertising Standards Authority(ASA) has banned LG’s mobile phone ad for promoting dangerous driving.
LG has recently started a campaign for its KF600 mobile phone and the ad shows a woman using phone while driving.
ASA is the independent British self regulatory organisation (SRO) of the advertising industry.
The ad in question opens with a woman stuck in her car in a traffic jam and then cut to a close-up of the phone, as the woman’s finger touches the bottom touchscreen of the phone. Then the ad cuts back to the woman in her car, a touch point appears at the bottom of the ad. Series of rotating images are then shown in which woman is in a motor boat, stretched out on her office desk, lying on an inflatable in a swimming pool and dancing in a dress. Text and voiceover says: “Moodswing? Modeswing!”.
The ASA received 33 public complaints against this ad and all of them said it is likely to encourage dangerous driving as it appeared to show the woman using her mobile phone while driving.
LG responded by saying that the woman was not actually using mobile phone while driving but she was imagining the phone triggering different scenarios and her changing mood.
The ASA acknowledged this fact but still maintained that the sequences of images of the woman in the car before and after using the phone implied she had been using it during driving. It breached the broadcasting code’s clause on health and safety
It is interesting to note that the advertising clearance centre, Clearcast, had approved the ad because the woman’s hands were clearly on the steering wheel before and after the cut-away to the phone.
Clearcast is the company responsible for the pre-transmission examination and clearance of television advertisements.
The ad has been taken off air.
0 responses so far
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.