IRELAND’S ADVERTISING WATCHDOG has upheld 82 complaints made against the latest controversial advertising campaign for Hunky Dory’s crisps – featuring scantily-clad women posing suggestively as Gaelic footballers.
The Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland said the adverts – which appeared as full-page and double-page ads in newspapers, as well as on billboards and online – breached five aspects of its advertising code.
Among the breaches were that the ad would cause “grave or widespread offence”, that it did not respect “the dignity of all persons”, and that it did not respect equality of men and women.
The body also said the ads – which featured slogans such as ‘Still sharing’, ‘Bursting with flavour’, and ‘Taaaasty’ – did not avoid “the exploitation of sexuality and the use of coarseness and undesirable innuendo.”
The advertiser, crisp manufacturer Largo Foods, had also breached the code by failing to respond to contact from the authority and offer a defence, which it had failed to do.
The common thread running through the complaints, the ASAI said, was that the ads were “offensive, exploitative, tasteless, degrading and sexist towards women and brought advertising into disrepute.”
Others complained that the ads served merely to objectify and not to sell crisps, while some complained it was demeaning to sportswomen. Among the complainants were the National Women’s Council of Ireland and the Renew support group.
Gaelic games groups had also distanced themselves from the ads, with the Camogie association’s president Joan O’Flynn saying the ads trivialised “the talent and ability of women in sport”.
The body also found that Largo Foods had been guilty of having “persistently and/or gravely breached its code”, noting that the latest ads were very similar to its rugby campaign from 2010.
“The Committee further considered that the advertisers seem to have deliberately flouted the Code with the intention of generating complaints, PR and subsequent notoriety,” it said.
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