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Award-Winning Ad Taken Off Air In Australia
bol_kernal writes "An award-winning advertisement on Australian TV for the new Hyundai 4WD has been pulled from being broadcast after stations received 80 complaints from concerned parents. The ad consists of a small child, age around 2 years, cruising down the road, window down, arm out the window, in his new Hyundai 4WD. He sees a girl of the same age standing on the side of the road, pulls over picks her up, and they go to the beach together. All in all it's cute, funny, and very well done. The ad aired late in the evening (8:30 pm or later), but it was pulled due to concern from parents about the copycat risk. What I want to know is, where has the responsibility of parents gone? Is the world becoming so serious — or so frightened — that fantasy is no longer allowed?"
Here's the ad on Youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=g37Z8Scbj8E
That's actually the very end of the television ad that was pulled.
The law was made because the major "australian" car manufacturer and their primary opposition (ford) were both glamourising speeding, burn outs, doughnuts etc. in car advertisements. I doubt the law was ever meant to cover situations which are technically difficult to reproduce.. afterall hyperbole is permitted in advertising (as long as it's evidently hyperbole and thus not misleading.)
Your link is broken, you've got an extra character in there. This should be right: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6GfdyIZcRH4
This sig is neither interesting, nor humorous. Including meta-humor.
The ad received 60 or so complaints in NZ, and wasn't pulled. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid =000019F4-D247-15DE-ADCE83027AF10110
If you had a child who, after seeing this ad, decided to run out and take off in your SUV, and was able to get away with it, there are problems with your parenting so deep and serious that it doesn't matter how many commercials you manage to have banned; your kids are fucked.
responsible parenting has gone somewhere; in the process, it also grabbed hold of some of our liberties and took off with them.
my pet machine
As an Aussie may I be the first to say "bugger!".
Yeah we are like the states, in that we are also continually embarassed by our official representatives. They played the ad on the (after hours) news and talk shows the other night, I doubt it will stay banned for long. Besides, it doesn't really matter now since more or less all 20 million of us have paid some attention to it for free.
My hunch is all 80 of them belong to the bunch of neo-nazi's that call themselves the "Family first" party.
It's also interesting to note that this happened on the same weekend that Dick Chenney came to town. Security ground Sydney to a halt while Dick enjoyed a taxpayer funded $2M "beer with the PM", and (with not a little irony), pontificated about "violence and disruption".
"We want David Hicks back.": Our PM and AG will "do everything they can" except utter those five words since well they would...ummm....hand him over, as they have for every other nation after the US supreme court desicion was made a few years ago. This and several other issues has now made the PM's own seat in parliment very vunerable in the next election, (4% swing is required to unseat him). BTW: Please don't use the above information to infer the opposition are in any way more competent than the current crop.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
But it didn't get pulled just because there were 80 complaints. Because there were complaints, it was investigated by the Advertising Standards Board, who ruled that it broke existing rules by showing illegal driving activity. Since it was found to break the rules, it was banned. (This is all from the article.)
Now, you can say the rules are stupid for banning ads like this, or that the 80 people were stupid for complaining, but I don't see how you can argue with a system which only punishes ads if
(a) they break rules that were in place anyway, and
(b) only if someone complains about them.
If you all Google Slashdot, will it Slashdot Google?
If it's a voluntary code of practice, then the ASB has no jurisdiction. If it's not voluntary, it's prior restraint... Unfortunately, we don't have the First Amendment here in Oz.
Kids, kids, kids; this commercial, while cute and benign in nature should be taken as a warning. I saw that Monkey (I know it's an ape) drving the Jeep in 'Grandma's boy' and let me tell you, before too long you'll all be looking at this ad with a more reflective mind. Babies and monkeys are silently gonna take the roadways...