28 November 2008
	ADVERTISING STANDARDS When tarts aren't tasty By David Furlonger It helps to know the limits and taboos of advertising - as they apply to your immediate setting

What do women's buttocks, a turbaned puppet and a squashed scorpion have in common? They are all deemed unsuitable in advertising. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which manages the advertising industry's self-regulation process, recently upheld complaints against campaigns using these images. As often happens, the ASA's decisions - which led to the ads being withdrawn - raised the debate on what is acceptable in advertising. What appeals to one person, may offend another. The task of determining what should and should not be shown or aired, is even more difficult in a confused, socially immature society like SA, where the search for conflict is a national pastime. Some complainants seem intent on finding offence. Compare that with Europe, where last year the European Advertising Standards Alliance - the equivalent of the ASA - took no action over hundreds of advertising standards breaches because no-one bothered to complain. Take alcohol advertising. In 2007 the alliance monitored 5 620 ads in European Union countries. It found more than 200 did not comply with agreed standards but only 15 were withdrawn after complaints were upheld. The biggest cause of breaches was the suggestion that booze would lead to sexual success. Encouragement of drinking by minors was also a problem. So what are the limits and taboos in advertising? There's no firm rule, says Pretoria University law professor Piet Delport, who consults to the ASA's "parent", the Association for Communication & Advertising (ACA). "Taste and decency differ from country to country. What is offensive in Uzbekistan may not be in SA." Even underlying rules - that advertising should be legal, decent, honest, and not offensive to prevailing standards - are open to interpretation. Some campaigns use parody to challenge taboos. Fast-food group Nando's sought notoriety by pushing the boundaries of taste: one ad featured a blind lady walking into a lamp-post. That its ads routinely earned complaints seemed to be welcomed by the company. That's a rare quality, says Kevan Aspoas, MD of The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town. "If you are forced to pull a campaign, that can be R2m in production costs lost. That's why a lot of agencies have become more cautious in their advertising content. If you want to be 'on the edge', it helps to have a client that buys in." Singh & Sons creative director Roger Paulse says: "We have a responsibility not to use clients' money for an experiment. We are supposed to be experts in what we do. We shouldn't be taking chances." But he adds: "There may be occasions when you are pushed by a client because he wants the work to be irresponsible and get noticed." BBDO Cape Town creative director Ivan Johnson understands that reasoning. "It's a cluttered environment in which you have to be noticed by your target audience. You sometimes have to risk being different or contentious, or you could risk not being noticed at all." Delport says the fact that some taboos are approached in spoof form - like Nando's - does not necessarily excuse them. Parody can reduce the insult but not when it comes to religion and disability. Nando's learnt about the latter with its blind-lady ad. Yet an ad from a fast-food competitor, featuring a blind girl smelling her food, passed the test because it was "honest" and not a parody, says Delport. "When fun is being made of a powerless group, it's always offensive," says Paulse. Religion is also a minefield. It's okay to make fun of a church congregation but not core religious values. So an ad suggesting Jesus could have been born in a hotel rather than a stable if Mary and Joseph had had access to the Yellow Pages, was considered to have overstepped the mark. Perhaps predictably, a phone ringtone TV ad featuring a puppet called Ahmed The Dead Terrorist shouting at the audience "Silence! I kill you", also won disapproval. Other boundaries are harder to predict. A McCain frozen foods ad apparently showing a mother's thought priorities - children, friends, work and food - was withdrawn after complaints that it implied these were the only things women think about. "It was accused of gender stereotyping," says Delport. "That was something that didn't occur to me when I was originally asked to look at the ad." Aspoas' agency has sometimes fallen foul of the rules. A Hyundai Tucson ad in which a young woman appears to stamp on a scorpion about to bite her, recently had to be withdrawn following complaints of animal cruelty. "Does that mean we shouldn't advertise Baygon because it kills defenceless insects?" asks Aspoas. Delport suggests one reason there are so many complaints about local ads is that South Africans are still coming to terms with the fact that they can complain. "Our standards here are more or less the same as overseas. But we are a relatively new democracy. Before, no-one listened to you. Now you get freedom of speech and people want to exercise it." Like SA labour laws, which have swung in favour of employees, so advertising standards have shifted in favour of complaining minorities. "They will eventually move back to the middle," he says. "There will be more leniency in future." In some respects, Aspoas says standards are already lenient. He is offended by the proliferation of permanent and mobile billboards advertising "gentlemen's clubs" and featuring bottoms and cleavages. Many are sited in residential suburbs where they are seen by children. So he is probably encouraged by the recent banning of one such poster, featuring a female rear and g-string, advertising a sex expo. A number of agencies set their own taboos. Some refuse to pitch for accounts featuring casinos, tobacco, prescription drugs, diet fads or even political parties. Says Paulse: "It shouldn't just be about the money. Our decisions should also be guided by personal morality." That's probably a safe call, because trying to guess others' morality can be dangerous, says Johnson. "Even the best strategic brains in the country get it wrong. We assume that if people enjoy reality shows where willing young tarts auction themselves off to a bachelor, they would enjoy a flippant message from an advertiser. We would be wrong. Viewers find tasteless and morally malnourished programming okay because it is escapism and has a degree of separation. Bring your product into their living room dressed as a tart and you risk losing a consumer forever. "When people have a connection with a brand, they consider it theirs. They expect something they have in their cupboards to behave in a certain way. Are there ways to be absolutely sure that you have not offended anyone? I'm afraid there aren't," says Johnson.