Ad watchdog clears insurance brands of safety and animal cruelty complaints
New ads for Budget Direct and Bingle have been cleared by the Ad Standards Board of suggestions they would encourage children to do dangerous stunts and promoted animal cruelty respectively.
Budget Direct’s new Captain Risky campaign came under fire after complainants suggested it could cause children to copy some of the stunts featured in the campaign which was made by 303Lowe.
“Each year children and young adults suffer diving accidents related to diving into shallow water and some end up with spinal injuries. This ad concerns me deeply as young children may copy this chap and dive off something high into a kid’s pool and suffer injuries,” a complaint read.
They are certainly spending plenty of money, not sure how they could get a return as the focus is on Captain Risky’s stunts, not the insurance company.
These complaints about advertisements issued by certain sections of the community is becoming ridiculous and its time some reevaluation and refinement to the complaints process is implemented to stop resources in both time and money being wasted by both the ASB and the advertiser.
If the Budget Direct Captain Risky ad campaign is “clearly targeted at adults”, why was the ad shown before the screening of a family film, “Paper Planes”, at United Cinemas Warriewood during the last school holidays?
At the cinema, on watching Captain Risky dive from a height into a children’s blow-up pool, my 7-year-old grandson, who had obviously seen the ad before and had given it some thought, commented on how he’d do the jump.
We can only hope he doesn’t test the theory at home, but the ad has obviously given children ideas.
The second I saw that Bingle ad I enrolled in a sky-diving course and then went and captured a chimp from the zoo.
Shows how powerful advertising can be. Or, how stupid some members of the public can be.