Advertisement 1) Israel tourist campaign "Size Doesn't Matter"
The campaign was created by the Canadian Federation of Jewish Students the Jewish student body of Canadian universities, in an attempt to counter the global campaign, the Israel Apartheid week.
The ad uses sexual innuendo to draw viewers into the ad. This ad is controversial not only because it clearly uses sexual innuendo to sell a product but because of the nature of the product, in this case Israel, which is often described as the "Holy Land," this use of sexual comedy may and indeed was seen as being unfitting to the holiness of the country.
The ad made quite a storm within the international Jewish community with many newspapers and bloggers commenting on the campaign.
Leading Israeli Newspapers the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and Ynet all spoke of the controversy, however, the general consensus is that the campaign has done more good in Israeli advocacy and the newspapers were ultimately in praise of the campaign.
I personally feel that this campaign was cleaver and whilst being controversial it nonetheless, appealed to directly to its target audience, being University students and did indeed achieve its aim of highlighting Israel in a different light then what most of the students where used to.
Advertisement 2: KFC- "Stuck in an awkward situation"
The campaign created by KFC Australia and designed for an Australian audience was not deemed controversial at all in Australia, however, due to technologies such as Youtube, the ad got a strong viewing in the U.S and was deemed highly controversial and racist, so much so that KFC decided to take the advertisement off television.
Most Australian media such as the ABC, The Australian, The Age, and even the British Guardian, highlight that the ad was only deemed controversial in the United States.
Most Australian media such as the ABC, The Australian, The Age, and even the British Guardian, highlight that the ad was only deemed controversial in the United States.
Many Australians disagree with America not seeing the ad as a awkward situation because of a colour, but rather because of the fact that the Australian supporter was surrounded by supporters of the opposing team.
Furthermore, many Americans interpreted the message to be even more racist because of a long stereotype of African-Americans having eating disorders relating to fried chicken.
The ad is clearly intended for an Australian audience, the very fact that the advertisement was even aired in America was due to copyright infringements. The ad would be the same message even if it had been shown in the context of AFL, for example KFC could have shown a Carlton supporter in a crowd of only Collingwood fans and shown the same message. Nonetheless, the KFC example shows how important it is to understand cultural sensitivity of other countries and even though KFC was not advertising in the U.S they are still multinational brand with a strong American consumer base and need to be sensitive. Whilst, they may not have had to remove the ad, strategically they made the most sensible decision.
Advertisement 3) EasyJet- "Weapons of Mass Distraction"
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| Sourced from digg.com http://digg.com/news/business/Discover_weapons_of_mass_distraction_image |
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| campaignlive.co.uk December 2003 |
This highly controversial advertisement was as the trade press article suggests the most talked about commercial in 2003 in the United Kingdom. The advertisement purpose is straight forward, the ad's goal was to get easyjet noticed. The advertisement which was realised during 2003 at the time when the war in Iraq was at its peak and the controversial search for Weapons of mass destruction was underway. The advertisment clearly did succeed in its goal as many media agencies picked up the story.
Whilst this advertisement seems to be nothing more than a publicity stunt, if we actual look into the advertisement we can see that there may be something behind the message. During the time of the advertisement the world was changing dramatically, it is possible that tourism and flights was dropping due to fears of international terrorism. Therefore, by creating satire of the situation Easyjet has also attempted to ease the consumers fears and enable them to be gain the confidence to travel.
For more news stories please see:
Advertisement 5) Ralph Inside every sensitive new age man, there isn't one
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| B&T Weekly July 1997 |
The controversial ad was a radio advertisement that aired on Australian radio station Triple M, the advertisement depicted a story of how a man choose who to hire based on "the women with the biggest tits. " This ad sparked controversy with several people calling in to complain.
Triple M decided to take the ad of air.
"Its defiantly naive, isn't it, to assume that no one listens apart from those you're targeting. "Ektstein AFA women in advertising committee.
This is an extremely poignant statement and I think it rings true for all advertisements whether they be TVC, Radio, Outdoor or any other medium. Whilst this ad may have been an attempt at humor it was aired on a national radio station which, whilst, does attract many listeners within Ralph's target audience many were not and were offended by the ad.
The question is does this matter?
The answer is to Ralph's target audience no it does not matter, as they are the actual consumers and purchases of this product. Ralph does and should have no problems offending other members of society they have created a magazine for men's interest and whilst the advert may have indeed offended many it is unlikely to have offended any of Ralph's readers.
Nonetheless, the AFA has every right to ban this advertisement as it is overly offensive.
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