An underwear ad featuring Wallabies star Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins has received complaints for making colloquial references to male genitalia.
The television ad, created by Sojo, features the footy frontrunner describing his undergarments as “snazzy looking fart filters that’ll keep your meat and two veg very warm”, which some members of Australia considered in breach of advertising standards.
Cummins also described the underwear as the “duck’s nuts” and called Tradie underwear “the ultimate toolbox”.
But the Advertising Standards Board (ASB) has dismissed the complaints, saying most Aussies would be familiar with the slang.
The commercial aired during Nine’s Friday Night Football program, a time Sojo argued was an “appropriate” viewing time to show an ad for male undergarments.
“We are advertising men’s underwear and therefore it is appropriate to show a man (Nick Cummins) in his underwear and comment on the comfort and style (good looks) of the underwear,” Sojo said.
The ASB rallied behind the underwear makers, saying the “the level of nudity was consistent with similar advertisements for underwear” and was not “sexually suggestive” in any way.
“The Board noted the reference to ‘meat and two veg’ and considered that whilst this colloquial reference to a man’s penis and testicles may be found offensive to some members of the community the Board considered that it is not strong, obscene or sexualised language,” it stated.
It also stated that while the phrase ‘duck’s nuts’ could be understood as “the testicles of a duck” and that ‘toolbox’ is a typical phrase to describe a man’s, well, toolbox, the board’s hammer came down in favour of Sojo, stating, “overall the language was not strong or obscene or inappropriate in the circumstances”.
