Background
Summary of Council decision:
Two issues were investigated, both of which were Upheld.
Ad description
A pre-roll ad for a Comedy Central programme called ‘East Mode with Nigel Ng’ featured a young man and his parents sitting together over tea. At the beginning of the ad, the mother said, “Son, we’re worried about you.” The father then said, “It’s just you are nearly 30 years old now and you have never brought a girl home to meet us. Or a boy. No-one.” The mother continued, “So we’ve arranged something for you.” The young man interrupted, “I told you, I’m not into this whole arranged marriage thing.” The mother replied, “It’s not that, that’s such an antiquated tradition, so intrusive.” The son asked, “OK, so what have you arranged?” The parents were shown taking each other’s hands before the father said, “We have arranged for you a f[bleep] buddy.” The word fuck was partially censored. Both parents looked pleased and proud. The son looked shocked and said, “A what?” The mother said, “Oh sorry, maybe you kids call it something else these days. You know, someone you have casual sex with, friend with benefits.” The father continued, “Cum chums, pound pals.” They then interviewed a series of potential partners. The interview conversations included the claims “d in the v action”, “penis to enjoy”, “if you do decide to try some pegging” and “I’m more into mutual masturbation these days”.
The ad was seen before a YouTube video called ’10 Most Powerful Prehistoric Animals that Ever Existed’ on the ‘Facts Machine’ channel.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether:
1. the sexually explicit and profane language in the ad was offensive; and
2. the ad was irresponsibly targeted, as it was shown before a programme that they believed would be of interest to children.
Response
1. Paramount UK Partnership said that the content of the video was created as editorial content for a show on the Comedy Central channel. They believed it was light-hearted and comedic and, because of that, unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence. They said the ad was a parody of a scenario in which parents try to find a suitable spouse for their child and was intended to be playful, irreverent and to poke fun at social norms. They acknowledged that some viewers may have found the content of the ad distasteful or unamusing. They said that the word fuck had been ‘bleeped’ throughout the ad, but accepted that it had not been entirely obscured.
2. Paramount acknowledged that the ad was not suitable for children and said they had not intended it to be seen by children or served alongside content served to children. They said that their agency set its audience targeting to 18+. They said that the Facts Machine YouTube channel was not labelled as “Made for kids” and that this meant that adult content would not be completely restricted, and some ads suitable for adults might be shown, especially if the channel was viewed via a device logged into an adult user’s account. They said the ad was targeted using keywords and topics including sketch show, comedy sketch, comedy show, Comedy Central, stand-up comedy, short comedy, Asian comedy, TV shows and programmes, humour, live comedy, TV comedies, TV Talent and Variety shows. They said that it was not clear that the Facts Machine channel produced content for children; the animal videos it showed often included scenes of graphic animal violence.
Paramount said that the ad was no longer running and that they had initiated a review of their compliance procedures relating to age-restrictions of programme content advertising and issues such as bleeping and adult content warnings.
Google confirmed that this ad was served through Google Ads, a self-administered system. They said they had found the ad to be in breach of Google’s policies, and had taken steps to prevent it from being served again.
Assessment
1. Upheld
The ASA acknowledged that the ad was intended to be humorous and irreverent and that it reflected the content of the advertised show. We noted that the ad did not include any explicit visuals and that the humour in the ad was generated in part by the contrast between the polite, formal situation and the profane conversation. However, we considered the profane comedy and language and explicit sexual references were likely to cause serious offence to a general audience. Viewers who were not familiar with the advertised show and who had not been warned of the adult content of the ad were particularly likely to be offended.
We concluded that, in the context and media in which it had appeared, the ad was likely to cause serious offence.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule
4.1
4.1
Marketing communications must not contain anything that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence. Particular care must be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of: age; disability; gender; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. Compliance will be judged on the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards.
Marketing communications may be distasteful without necessarily breaching this rule. Marketers are urged to consider public sensitivities before using potentially offensive material.
The fact that a product is offensive to some people is not grounds for finding a marketing communication in breach of the Code.
(Harm and offence).
2. Upheld
We noted that Facts Machine described itself as a “channel where you will find videos about interesting stuff from various topics”. We considered that, although it was not explicitly targeted at children, the channel showed content that was likely to appeal to children, such as short-form content about animals. In light of the ad’s use of profane comedy and language and explicit sexual references, we considered that the ad should have been appropriately targeted to avoid the risk of children seeing it.
We noted the targeting exclusions and keywords placed by Paramount and we considered it reasonable for them to have expected that, by placing them, the ad would not have appeared around content of interest to children. However, those exclusions had proved insufficient to prevent the ad from being seen around videos on Facts Machine channel, before an animal video. Because the ad appeared before a video likely to appeal to children, we concluded that it had been inappropriately targeted.
We concluded that the ad had been irresponsibly targeted.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules
1.3
1.3
Marketing communications must be prepared with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society.
(Responsible advertising) and
4.1
4.1
Marketing communications must not contain anything that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence. Particular care must be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of: age; disability; gender; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. Compliance will be judged on the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards.
Marketing communications may be distasteful without necessarily breaching this rule. Marketers are urged to consider public sensitivities before using potentially offensive material.
The fact that a product is offensive to some people is not grounds for finding a marketing communication in breach of the Code.
(Harm and offence).
Action
We told Paramount UK Partnership to take care to avoid causing serious or widespread offence in future and to ensure their ads were appropriately targeted and that ads that were unsuitable for viewing by children did not appear in media that was likely to appeal to children.
