Bulletin

June 2019  #110

The top 10 to 30 June 2019

Violence in horror movie trailers tops the list in the 10 most complained about advertisements from the first six month of 2019. See the Ad Standards blog for details.

Rude AF

In June, the Ad Standards Community Panel (the Community Panel) looked at complaints about advertisements for phones and soup that featured the acronyms AF and F. Complainants were concerned about the implication of a swear word. However, the Community Panel found that the posters did not use inappropriate language and, in both instances, the F stood for something else.

All Community Panel determinations are published online at www.adstandards.com.au

Discrimination against age

Complainants believe that older people are often negatively stereotyped in advertising as ‘cranky, crazy and sex-mad’. This was Ad Standards CEO Fiona Jolly’s key message when she spoke at the Council on the Ageing’s National Policy Forum in Canberra this month.

Gender stereotypes

The Advertising Standards Authority’s (UK) new provision regarding the use of gender stereotypes in advertising has received a lot of media attention. In Australia, the AANA Code of Ethics has always prohibited ads that “discriminate or vilify against a person on the basis of gender”. The Code of Ethics Practice Note was updated in July 2018 to further explain the type of depictions that should be avoided.

Examples of portrayals that may amount to discrimination or vilification from the Practice Note include advertising which: 
• depicts family members creating a mess while a woman has sole responsibility for cleaning it up; • suggests that a specific activity is inappropriate for boys because it is stereotypically associated with girls, or vice-versa; or
• features a man trying and failing to undertake simple parental or household tasks.