Stupid audience = stupid ads

This article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald about a week ago, lsting the 10 most complained about ads in Australia for 2008.

1. Kotex U female sanitary products - 185 complaints
   
2. Domino’s Pizza – 145 complaints
   A man dressed as a character called Many Toppings sings to the tune of Supercalafragilisticexpealadocious.
3. Advanced Medical Institute  – 110 complaints
   Want longer lasting sex billboard.
   
4. Inghams – 100 complaints
   
5. Quit Victoria – 65 complaints
   
6. Coca-Cola Mother – 50 complaints
   
7. Tell The Truth Coalition – 45 complaints
   Pamphlet depicting pictures of aborted foetuses.
8. Virgin Mobile Go Topless – 45 complaints
   A young woman covers her bare breasts as she talks on the phone.
9. Advanced Medical Institute - 45 complaints
   Bonk longer billboard.
10. Motorola Razr mobile phone – 40 complaints
    

The justification for the complaints from the Advertising Standards Bureau’s Fiona Jolly was that “the community has a high level of concern about ads which could inadvertently cause distress to their children and to themselves.”

She also stated, “We have a . . . complaints system that gives consumers a voice and allows us to keep advertising in Australia at a high standard.”

 

 

WHAT THE HELL. SERIOUSLY.

Kids don’t know what beavers are (and half of them have them anyway, not to mention that all of them CAME OUT OF ONE), know you can’t kill people with phones and don’t find creepy fat men dressed as Mary Poppins scary as long as they’re still in the TV and not outside their school as a bad thing. And btw, your 5 year old hears worse words at school than “freaking”.

Canning ads that use a beaver puppet instead of blue liquid or women riding horses, or having the client step up and accept that their original product is shit and they’re replacing it ISN’T keeping advertising in Australia at a high standard. It’s making it dull, boring and so cotton-wooled that you can expect more of the same droning message for every 20 minutes you sit down to watch Law and Order. We might as well just screen Proactiv ads and be done with it.