Ad Standards Board rules ad saying ‘Hearing aids can be UGLY’ is discriminatory

The Ad Standards Board has banned a controversial Victorian Hearing campaign which described hearing aids as “ugly” along with an image in which the hearing device was replaced with a prawn.

Victorian Hearing apologised for the campaign at the end of last month after people took to the page’s Facebook page to express their anger, with one poster saying: “I don’t really love my hearing aids, but I accept that with the severity of my hearing loss, I’m stuck with them. To see them referred to as ugly though — that’s just really unhelpful.”

The ad, which was running online, on social media and across transport, was removed following the apology.

Complaints against the ad argued it was “utterly offensive” to use the word ugly to describe hearing aids.