list of contributors - GALA

for a decision. The commercial intended to promote a watch, showed a
young couple meeting at home, having dinner, the young man offering the
promoted watch as a gift to his female partner, and exchanging tender
caresses. Suddenly the magic of the moment gets interrupted by the couple
jointly emitting farts.
In the Board’s view the commercials exceeded the limits of simple bad taste
and had to be held in violation of the code’s prescriptions on violence,
vulgarity, indecency (Section 9), moral, civil, and religious beliefs and human
dignity (Section 10), children and adolescents (reference is to section 11, in
particular to the provision requiring that “advertising must not induce children
and adolescents to: … violate rules of generally established social behaviour”) and
fairness in advertising (section 1, reference is made to the provision
according to which “Advertising must be honest, truthful and correct. It must
avoid anything likely to discredit it”).
The Jury did not agree on the advertisers and on the agency’s defence, trying
to present the commercial as “strongly ironic” and provocatively funny, but
not meant to result in an invitation to unconventional behaviour, and felt
that:
- claims made and situations presented have to be evaluated taking the
general public’s sensitivity into proper account,
- limits to a certain behaviour certainly do depend on the historical moment
and on the social context,
- nevertheless it could hardly be affirmed that the current historical and
social context had already succeeded in transforming farts into a behaviour
respectful of the rules of common decency, a useful tool for means of
communication or into a valid expedient for resolving embarrassing
situations,
- even if farts are something that happen and may be considered as ‘normal
functional events’, the appraisal from the general public is still oriented in
rather negative terms and tend to relegate them to very intimate moments.
Therefore the Jury stated that the principles set by Sections 9 and 11 of the
code had been violated and issued a desist injunction.
5. Self-Regulation
Topic: Imitation/Denigration – TV commercial
Who: Automotive: German vs. Italian car
When: January 2005
Where: Italy
What Happened: A renown German car producer approached the Italian Advertising Self-
Regulation system with a complaint:
- explaining that its new Series 1 model had been recently promoted with the
following slogan: “when you’re born, when you’re growing up, when you’re
playing, when you’re confronting yourself, when you’re falling in love, when you’re
at home, when you’re eating, when you’re sleeping, when you’re jumping, when
you’re falling, when you’re waiting, when you’re coming to a stop: Why be just one
among many?” (during the commercial ordinary people were shown in
situations correspondent to the statements, while at the end the new car
emerges from a tunnel, is shown in various positions and the headlines says:
“The new XYZ 1 Series: One like no one"; in another, similar version the
commercial ends with the statement: “Why being just one among many, when
you can be one like no one? The new XYZ 1 Series, One like no one"),
- affirming that an Italian car producers started presenting one of its new