Does the ASA only come into play once an ad is broadcast? Isn’t there some process of screening and approval before it gets aired?

Where else would young children be allowed to watch an innocent man (a philanthropist you might say) being blasted into the ground by a missile-toting woman? (It’s not just a gun is it?) Is this the result of too many media graduates in positions of power finally getting their way? ’Oh, hey, d’ya know what I think would be really cool…?’ Or is it a pop at the Italians who did, let’s face it, get to the Euro 2012 final? Nah, that’s just cynical… There’s a watershed (gradually slipping I notice) where certain themes aren’t meant to be watched by young, impressionable minds. Films have certificates and warnings. Adverts don’t.

It’s the unpalatable stew of messages being sent out that gets me. Gun crime: wrong. Mad massacring of innocent people: wrong. Made-up annihilation of innocent person: OK. How can it even sell the site it’s promoting? Boycott the thing, I say.

I was one of thirteen individuals who complained to the ASA about the Reed employment radio ad which featured a German-accented dictator-type boss. (No prizes for guessing who it was meant to be).

The complaint was upheld. My argument was that it was anachronistic and unhelpful to keep remembering Hitler as a German figure of note. Others agreed.

So what organisation even allows this ad to be aired? Man being shot for no good reason. And a popular man too. He can sing. He’s fun in an overbearing way and is probably as liked as the meerkat family. You can’t say the name of the website to anyone without singing it really can you?

And to think someone got paid for thinking it up. Did no one in the process of viewing or making it think, ‘This is bad taste’?

Will the next set of ads feature a gang of Italians hunting down Sue Barker?

It’s bad enough that all foreigners are portrayed in a myopically backward way (the Mexican with his poncho, the Italian dressed as a waiter, the German dictator, the Chinese in the kitchen of a restaurant…) but going by this ad, middle England is now free to decimate them whenever they want.

A wholehearted thumbs down to the all concerned. Shame on the lot of you.

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