Banning Adverts

From the BBC 

A TV advert for a web-hosting company in which a man fantasises about actress Pamela Anderson being squirted with cream has been banned for being sexist and degrading to women.

Anderson is portrayed chairing a business meeting while a male colleague dreams about her and another woman in bikinis being covered with cream. Dreamscape Networks, the company in the ad, said it was tongue-in-cheek...

The watchdog received four complaints in February from viewers who saw the ad on Comedy Central and Sky One. They all reported seeing it after 9pm.

The same film was taken off air by the ASA's Australian equivalent after a series of complaints in 2010.

I've sometimes wondered about the economics of risque advertising, and whether some companies have a deliberate "get banned" strategy.

Think about it:

1. Advertising on TV to a large audience is pretty expensive. Coronation St is something like £150K for a 30 second spot that reaches 10m people.

2. A banning story reaches at least double that as everyone features it with various angles from "Phwoaaarrr" in The Sun to "how awful (pics below)" in The Mail to "the patriarchy still rules" in The Guardian. The Telegraph were even kind enough to link to it on YouTube. The only cost is a few cheap ads on Comedy Central.

3. How hard would it be to get 4 complaints? Call up what's left of Mary Whitehouse's lot, warn them there's a filthy ad on, they'll soon write into the ASA.

4. People are generally more engaged with news stories than ads.

5. Let people who have recorded it copy it out to YouTube, giving anyone searching for "pamela anderson dreamcape" a look at it, at no cost to you. Your marketing team can then track number of views to see how many people have looked at the ad (which is much cheaper than doing market research for TV ads).