Car Adverts

The rules on car adverts say that:

Quote:

Advertisements must not condone or encourage dangerous, competitive, inconsiderate or irresponsible driving or motorcycling.

There's an advert for the Toyota GR Supra I've seen on here (and elsewhere) that shows it being driven at speed and performing a power slide / drift. So I complained about it to the ASA.

This is the response I got:

Quote:

Your complaint

You objected that the ad was irresponsible because it showed a car being driven in a dangerous manner by showing the car being driven at a high speed and performing a drift. 

 

Our rules

Advertising should contain nothing that is likely to be deemed irresponsible.  We base our decisions on the content of the ad, when and where it appears, the audience and the type of product or service.  When assessing complaints in this area, difficult subjective judgements are often required and we aim to strike a balance between allowing an advertiser a platform for their product while ensuring the high standards of the advertising rules are met.

 

The ASA Council’s decision

Council considered that the ad was highly stylised and not representative of real driving conditions. While Council noted that the car appeared to be going at a high speed relative to the parked cars around it, and that the driving manoeuvre featured would be dangerous and irresponsible if performed on a public highway, given the overall tone and context of the scenes depicted, it was clear that the ad did not portray a real-life driving situation. Council considered that viewers would not take the ad literally or be encouraged to imitate the actions shown. Council therefore concluded that the ad did not condone or encourage dangerous or irresponsible driving behaviour. 

 

Action taken

We have made the advertiser aware of the issues that were brought to our attention in case they wish to take on-board the information provided when creating their ads in the future.

Although we won’t take further action this time, we will keep a record of your complaint for reference in our future assessments.  We will also take your complaint into account in our regular, proactive ‘intelligence gathering’ sweeps, where we analyse a range of information – including complaints made to us – to report on issues, even when they have not broken the advertising rules, that have caused concern.

We hope this helps to explain our decision, and thank you once again for contacting us.