An ad for a clothing brand featuring white powder has been censored by the Advertising Standards Bureau Board, while an ad for Red Bull with sexual overtones has escaped unscathed.
The double page spread for Unit clothing, which featured in a magazine, showed an image of a resort on the first page and dice, money, alcohol, g-string, gambling chips and white powder next to credit cards on the second. The white powder appears to represent cocaine or amphetamine. The banner along bottom of both pages reads "Life is not real, you are everything, everywhere and everywhen experiencing yourself subjectively".
The board upheld the complaints regarding the depiction of what appeared to be illegal drugs in the print ad, particularly as the demographic profile of readers of the magazine in which the ad featured was around 15-24 years olds.
The advertiser defended the advertisements and said: “We do not glorify drugs in this artwork. We are simply holding up a mirror to society.”
Unit added: “Alcohol kills more people each year than every other illicit drug combined times 100. Every night I watch TV and the adverts on TV tell us ‘drink beer, drink beer, drink beer’. So I find it quite ridiculous that we are in trouble over some talcum powder and breweries can keep killing people freely.”
The advertisements were considered to be in breach of the Advertiser Code of Ethics and have been modified to remove the offending power.
The Red Bull ads which were not found in breach of the code use cartoon-style figures in an animated scene at a beach nudist camp.
The ad shows a man approaching a female lying on a towel under an umbrella and asks if she minds if he lies near her. She says go ahead and then offers him a Red Bull drink which she says ‘revitalises mind and body’. He accepts, drinks the drink and then becomes embarrassed, turns around and covers his genitals – which are covered by a black strip throughout the advertisement. He grows wings and flies off.
Red Bull defended the ad and said it and other Red Bull ads were designed to be “humorous, satirical” and “not a true life scenario”.
Red Bull added: “All of our advertisements are approved by FACTS (Federation of Australian Commercial
Television Stations) and the advertisements are placed during appropriate television programs and cinema screenings and not those targeted towards children.”
