Advertising News

The animal campaign group Peta has taken issue with a North American retailer Canada Goose which sells down filled jackets. Peta writes:

To kick off our robust anti-Canada Goose campaign across the U.S. and Canada, an enormous billboard has been erected near the retailer's flagship store in Chicago. A goose, pleading for his life, now towers over one of Chi-Town's busiest streets, reminding drivers and pedestrians alike that geese don't want to die.

Meanwhile, in Short Hills, New Jersey, geese are making their own bus-side plea that's sure to grab folks' attention.

However not everyone is happy with the adverts leading to the advertising space company Astral, quickly taking down some of the adverts.

Peta wasn't impressed and responded:

Citing numerous complaints, the ad agency Astral Media Outdoor removed PETA's ads from several bus shelters in Toronto after they were up for just one day last month--so our legal counsel sent a letter to the agency pointing out that the censorship violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedom of expression, and demanding an explanation for the removal of the ads.

Online adverts placed by Scottish companies are to be trawled by automated bots to proactively seek out commercials which break censorship rules.

The automated technology is part of a new strategy to be unveiled next month by the Advertising Standards Authority, which will use the software to identify adverts and social media posts which could potentially be in breach of official standards. They will then be assessed by humans and a decision made as to whether action should be taken.

ASA chief executive Guy Parker told Scotland on Sunday that Scottish companies and organisations were likely to be specifically targeted under the new, UK-wide strategy. Parker regurgitated the old trope that the innocent have nothing to fear saying:

I don't think responsible Scottish companies have anything to fear -- on the contrary, they will welcome better online regulation.

We want to make more adverts responsible online than we have at the moment. We are looking at how we can responsibly automate something that would flag up things that we would then want humans to review. We want to be in a position by 2023 where we are an organisation that is using this technology in a way that makes adverts more responsible.

It seems that Scotland was chosen as the Guinea-pig for the new system as ASA says that Scots historically don't complain much about adverts, although there was an upturn last year. Parker notes that the most complaints UK-wide come from "better off, middle class people in London and the southeast of England".

Sweden's Advert Censor (RO) has criticized a Stockholm company for sexism after it used a popular meme alongside a recruitment advert.

The image, known by online communities as the Distracted Boyfriend Meme, is based on a stock photo of a man turning away from his appalled girlfriend to look at an attractive woman. Swedish ISP Bahnhof used the image alongside a jobs advert; in their take on the meme, the boyfriend was turning away from your current workplace to stare at Bahnhof.

The censor claimed that the use of the meme was gender-discriminatory, both due to presenting women as interchangeable and sex objects and presenting a stereotypical picture of men seeing women as interchangeable. Saying that it seems a little discriminatory to stereotype men as always seeing women as interchangeable.

The original posts shared to Bahnhof's Facebook and Instagram pages received hundreds of comments. Many of these criticized the alleged sexism of the image, and the advert was reported to the advert censor.