How Dare They!
Moan, whinge, whine and complain. It is a trait that Brit’s revel in. If you do something well, why stop? In fact, if you do something well, do it more.
The ASA has revealed that more complaints were registered in 2014 than ever before, and that Internet complaints eclipsed those of TV for the first time.
This isn’t surprising though, is it? The Internet is hardly a bastion of reticence. If we have learned anything since the Internet’s inception it is that people get quite lairy, and we are a nation (a world?) of continuously offended folk.
It wouldn’t be right to suggest that all complaints are without merit; for example Paddy Power’s Oscar Pistorius advert ‘Money Back if He Walks’ – which, incidentally, received more complaints than any other campaign. Ever (5,525), can be understandably conceived as offensive.
Kode’s very own, Catfish directed a Flora commercial for which the ASA received 183 complaints, granted it’s hardly enough to strike fear into the very heart of advertising but enough to find a place in the Top 10. What crime? What vicious awfulness could have encouraged 183 people to smash their offended fists upon their keyboards, or force them to rage down the phone to some answering device at the other end? Two children (animated) walking in on their parents ‘wrestling’ – I don’t need to tell you there is no footage, even BTS, of the parents in flagrante.
A debate has been taking place for some time now as to whether we are a society which has become far more sensitive, or if we now have a platform for which we can, instantaneously, air these feelings. It is in that final sentence that my focus has always returned; the instantaneous ability to declare ones frothy mouthed ire. It is everywhere, not least Twitter.
There was a time where the audience would have some breathing time, time to allow their blood pressure to resume some form of normality before revealing how truly upset they were/are. Now we need only turn to our phone, which for most is surgically attached to the palm, and call to attention how each and every sensibility has been kicked up and down the street because Booking.com BV could, possibly, have replaced the word f*cking for the word ‘booking’. 1, 768 concerned (busy bodies) took to the ASA venting concern that children might start calling their parents ‘booking w@nkers’
The complaints were dismissed with the withering assessment that “We also ruled that it was unlikely to encourage swearing amongst children; any children that did pick up on the joke were unlikely to have learned bad language through the ad itself.”
All this said, surely the most complained about commercial ever according to the Advertising Standards Authority UK is a meagre 5,525 perhaps we aren’t that sensitive after all – I mean, there are about that many people shoehorned into any Central Line train between the hours of 7am and 9pm each day. Perhaps we are lazy moaners; I know I am. I have a letter to send to Virgin Media that has sat in my ‘draft’ folder for six months. I have been told I must Tweet them instead of write a letter. Modern day complaining, there is something else I can moan about.
2015 will almost certainly see a rise in the 5,252 figure as Protein World’s ‘are You Beach Body Ready’ campaign attempted to dominate the world for a week or two.
My own interpretation of something insulting falls very firmly in the ‘is it funny (most insulting campaigns are done so in jest)? Does it work?’ If it is funny, then go for it. If it is in poor taste and fails in practically any and all attempt at wit then bin it. Then again, I have a high tolerance to being offended. I would tell you all to lump it, bite me and do one but wouldn’t want to be reported to the powers that be.