Background
Summary of Council decision:
Two issues were investigated, both of which were Upheld.
Ad description
Two radio ads for Howe Tools, a power tool supplier, heard in October on Greatest Hits Radio and Heart Radio:
a. In the first radio ad, a voice-over said, “At Howe Tools, we swear by our reliability, which is why we sell quality power tools from only the best brands. And if you don’t believe us you can go [bleep] and [bleep] yourself… Right who’s pressing the bleep button?” A second voice-over then said, “Sorry! Bleep machine is broken.” The original voice-over then responded, “I said, you can go order one today, and enjoy next day delivery at no extra cost. Test us yourself, you won’t [bleep] regret it. Reliability, we swear by it.”
b. In the second radio ad, a voice-over said, “At Howe Tools, we swear by our reliability. Which is why we sell quality power tools from only the best brands and if you don’t believe us you can go [bleep] and [bleep] yourself… Right, who’s pressing the bleep button?” A second voice-over said, “Sorry!” The original voice-over then said, “I said you can go order one today and enjoy next day delivery at no extra cost. Test us yourself! Did you get that?”, to which the second voice-over replied, “Yep!”. The first voice-over said, “[bleep] idiot. Reliability? We swear by it”.
Issue
Two complainants, who believed that the bleeps alluded to expletives, challenged whether the ad:
1. was offensive; and
2. was unsuitable for children to hear.
Response
1. & 2. Howe Tools said that, because Radiocentre had cleared the script, they understood that it was suitable for broadcast. They asserted that the words “fuck” and “fucking idiot” were not alluded to in the ads. They explained that, when the ads were recorded, the voice actors said the sound “beep” for the first two bleeps heard in the ads, and the word “bloody” for the third bleep, before the bleep sounds were added in post-production. To demonstrate that point, they supplied two audio graphs of the recordings, which showed that no sound was uttered alongside the first or second bleep. As such, they believed that those expletives could not be heard in either ad. They also highlighted that the word “bloody” was classified as a mild swear word according to Ofcom research. They said that the campaign was due to end shortly.
Radiocentre said that, at the time of clearance, they believed that specific expletives could not be identified in the ad. They also referred to a CAP Advice article which only featured examples containing partially obscured expletives.
Radio Experts, the production agency, explained the intention of the ads was to emphasise that Howe Tools were a reliable company that could be trusted. They believed that they had taken great care to ensure that the delivery was not aggressive or forceful in tone. They re-iterated that the expletive “fuck” was not recorded and therefore cannot be heard during the ads. Instead, they believed that the “ck” sound heard was the “click” at the end of the bleep sound. They also highlighted that they had created two ads, led by both male and female voices to ensure that neither gender was perceived negatively.
Bauer confirmed that the ads were heard on Greatest Hits Radio in East Anglia. They explained that Greatest Hits plays classic hits from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and was therefore targeted at older audiences. They highlighted that the average age of a Greatest Hits Radio listener in East Anglia was 51 years, and that 98% of the audience were over 18 according to RAJAR data. They recognised that some listeners may have found the wordplay distasteful but believed that the ad was unlikely to cause widespread or serious offence with a mature audience. They referred to a previous ASA ruling concerning a TV ad which was not considered to have caused serious or widespread offence. It featured a well-known phrase and replaced the expletive with a word rhyming with that expletive. With that ruling in mind, they considered a bleeped out expletive which listeners were not able to hear was less likely to cause offence than a word which sounded very similar to an expletive.
Global confirmed that the ads ran across different Heart Radio channels. They stated that the ads had been cleared by Radiocentre with no restrictions, and as such, believed that the ads were suitable for broadcast.
Assessment
1. & 2. Upheld
The BCAP Code stated that ads must not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.
The ads used “bleeps” to obscure certain words and phrases throughout in contexts where it appeared the person speaking might swear. We recognised that Howe Tools may have intended to refer to different expletives. However, we considered that listeners would interpret the bleeps as “fuck” or its derivatives, given the context of the ad and the way in which the bleeps were heard. For example, we considered that the sentence “you can go [bleep] yourself” heard in the ads would be understood as an allusion to the phrase “you can go fuck yourself”. We accepted that the word “fuck” had not been said by the voice actors when recording, though we considered that they had said the word “bleep” instead, and that would have been intended to be heard as an expletive. We also noted that in ad (b), the last two letters of the expletive “fuck” appeared to be audible in the second bleep, which, although we acknowledged was likely as a result of the bleep being added in post-production, we nevertheless considered further contributed to that impression. Within the narrative of the ads, it later transpired that the person speaking had supposedly not referred to expletives. However, we considered that the “intended” sentence was much longer than the bleep allowed for, and therefore, it was unlikely that listeners would believe that had been said instead of the expletive.
We assessed the tone and meaning of the expletives which were alluded to in the ads. We considered that “fuck” was a word so likely to offend that it should not generally be used or alluded to in advertising. We further considered that phrases such as “fuck yourself” and “fucking idiot” would likely be considered aggressive in nature, even if listeners understood that the ads were intended to be humorous.
For those reasons we concluded that the allusion to expletives in ads with a general adult audience was likely to cause serious offence, and therefore, that the ads were also unsuitable to be heard by children.
The ads breached BCAP Code rules 1.2 (Responsible Advertising) and 4.2 (Harm and Offence).
Action
The ad must not appear in the form complained of. We told Howe Tools to avoid alluding to expletives which were likely to cause serious offence.
