Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

British advertising watchdog dismisses complaint over "killer" ad

Rob Beschizza at 9:25 am Wed, Mar 13, 2013

— FEATURED —

Science

Making sense of the confusing Supreme Court DNA patent ruling

Book Review

The 'Geisters: spooky, scary novel

Science

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

Feature

The Snowden Principle

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
An advertisement for sleazy clothing retailer Asos showed a man, the "Asossin", crushing another with Christmas decorations, pushing a radio into an occupied bathtub, and trapping a woman in a chest freezer. This generated complaints to the authorities, but they have not been upheld.

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

MORE:  ads

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

  • http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

    I’ll just state the obvious:

    Christ, what an Asos.

  • Guest

    You think they would of banned it for being remotely interesting; isn’t there a rule that ads are to be as banal as possible?

  • Emo Pinata

    “The complainants challenged whether the ad was irresponsible, in particular because it could be seen by children who might emulate the scenes shown”
    Can people really that concerned that their children will emulate cold blooded murder?

    • EH

      Not their children, silly, other peoples’. You know, the ones with the bad parents.

    • dragonfrog

      I haven’t seen the ad but I’d have thought the concern would be that kids wouldn’t appreciate the actual danger involved, and might emulate the scenes as a joke.

      Of course it’s also one more step in the normalization of violence, but then toy ads do a good enough job of that…

  • http://www.facebook.com/iharris Ian Harris

    Why is ASOS ‘sleazy’?

    • William Farrar

      With a fake edgy ad like that I think it is safe to assume they at least aspire to sleaze.

  • http://dev.null.org/acb/ acb

    Can people really that concerned that their children will emulate cold blooded murder?

    In Britain, a significant proportion of the press is dedicated to the assumption that the country’s children are cold-blooded killers.

    • Stooge

      Ironically the very same segment of the press is also dedicated to the assumptions that murderous pedophiles are behind every corner and that teenage girls sole function is to act as masturbation fodder.

      • RElgin

         True enough.  This is one reason I am not interested in visiting such a country.

  • http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/ pduggie

    Clearly they don’t know how triggering having women trapped in freezers or refrigerators is to the female comic geek community. for SHAME!

  • http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

    That’s surprising considering Britain rebranded the TMNT to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

  • Sallynotadude

    Wow that was actually pretty disturbing, especially the ending.