AN ADVERTISEMENT featuring a barechested, overweight man apparently about to breastfeed a baby has earned the dubious distinction of being the most-complained about ad of 2008 so far.
There were 35 complaints made about Paddy Power's "Where have all the women gone?" advertisement to the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland, which upheld the complaints.
Complainants described the advertisement, which was prominently displayed on roadside billboards, as "offensive, completely inappropriate, vulgar, rude, distasteful and repulsive". One considered it not only "offensive to mothers but to women, men, fathers and children too".
Paddy Power argued that the ad was supposed to be fun and "the idea was that all the women have gone to play online bingo, leaving the men to do everything else".
This did not sway the authority's 14-member complaints committee, which includes representatives from the advertising industry. The committee agreed that the campaign was distasteful. Paddy Power was told to exercise greater care.
The breastfeeding ad was one of 15 advertisements considered by at the authority's February meeting. Complaints were upheld about eight of them, mostly on the grounds that they were misleading.
One of the upheld complaints was about a TV ad for a product called "Silence" which is a kind of anti-snoring spray containing a "menthol flavoured muco-adhesive mousse". The ad, by Eurosales international, boasted that the produce was "the first muco adhesive formula to silence snoring throughout the night".
A complainant found the product ineffective, but when the advertising committee investigated further, Eurosales produced consumer trial evidence. The trial, of 11 users and their partners, found that " the flavour of the product disagreeable, that the product was moderately effective and that this effect lasted an average of four hours," the advertising authority stated. The committee did not consider that sufficient research had been carried out to substantiate the claims and warned Eurosales on making claims it could not substantiate.
An ad for the telecommunications carrier Hutchinson 3G Ireland - better known as "3" - was the second-most complained about ad.
It was upheld in part because it offered mobile broadband with "blistering speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps" yet the highest speed experienced by any of the complainants was 1 Mbps.
The company argued that this was a maximum speed, and the ad included a disclaimer saying "service limitations apply".
The committee did not think the disclaimer was adequate.