Home » Weekly Ad Round-Up: The Good, The Bad & The “What The Hell Were They Thinking?”

5 June, 2015

Weekly Ad Round-Up: The Good, The Bad & The “What The Hell Were They Thinking?”

It’s the weekly roundup of ‘f**k yes’ and ‘f**k no’ of advertising. B&T has trolled the internet to find this week’s best and worst in the advertising and marketing world.

The Good

Godzilla has become an official resident and tourism ambassador for the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, Japan. The monster’s residency is a publicity stunt for a new Japanese-produced Godzilla film in 2016, following the success of the 2014 Hollywood remake.

People can visit the Shinjuku tourism office and pick up a copy of the official residency document for the giant reptilian monster. The certificate reads:

Name: Godzilla
Address: Shinjuku-ku, Kabuki-cho, 1-19-1
Date of birth: April 9, 1954 [the year of the release of the very first Godzilla film]
Date of becoming a Shinjuku resident: April 9, 2015
Reason for special residency: Promoting the entertainment of and watching over the Kabuki-cho neighborhood and drawing visitors from around the globe in the form of the Godzilla head built atop the Shinjuku Toho Building.
Previous visits to Shinjuku Ward: 3 times; Godzilla (1984), Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991), Godzilla 2000 Millennium (1999)

The Bad

Charlton Athletic football club is in deep poop with the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after running an online ad showing a couple having sex in the middle of the club’s grounds in south east London.

The sex tape went viral in February with the football club originally denied any involvement in the video. Eventually Charlton confessed they were involved in the stunt, and have since had to remove the ‘found-footage’ of the couple banging from all their platforms.

The ASA said that the sexual content made it unsuitable for children and that running the ad on Charlton Athletic’s official YouTube channel meant that it was likely to be seen by young fans.

Charlton Athletic’s said they ‘did not accept that the marketing activity was sexist or derogatory towards women’, and that ‘it was not targeted towards children or released onto any children’s platforms’.

The Ugly

The latest ad from fashion house Yves Saint Laurent has been banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for using a model who is unhealthily underweight. In a statement, the ASA said: “The ASA considered that the model’s pose and the particular lighting effect in the ad drew particular focus to the model’s chest, where her rib cage was visible and appeared prominent, and to her legs, where her thighs and knees appeared a similar width, and which looked very thin, particularly in light of her positioning and the contrast between the narrowness of her legs and her platform shoes.

“We therefore considered that the model appeared unhealthily underweight in the image and concluded that the ad was irresponsible.”

Join us next week, for what’s turning us on and turning us off in the advertising world. If you spot an advert in need of naming and shaming, tweet us @bandt

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