Club 18-30 Gets Break Courtesy Of ASA

Holiday company Club 18-30, whose reputation for causing controversy with its advertising was established as far back as 1996 (see Wonderbra Tops Ad Poll), has had a complaint against its latest press campaign rejected by the ASA.

The ads in question appeared in Boys Toys magazine. All showed photographic tableux of holiday scenes: A beach beside a swimming pool and in a club. The positioning of the people in the pictures contained sexual innuendo, such as a man who had just thrown a beach ball but looked as if his hands were fondling a woman’s breasts and a man standing in front of a seated woman who was holding an overflowing beer bottle to her lips; the base of the bottle was positioned to protrude from the man’s groin. The complainant felt that the campaign, by Saatchi & Saatchi, was offensive and pornographic and unsuitable for a modern technology magazine.

The advertisers, who stated that their target audience was 18-24 year olds, pointed out that the situations were all innocent and that any innuendo was drawn by the readers’ own conclusions. They also strongly denied that the ads were pornographic. The ASA agreed that the advertisements were not pornographic and considered that the sexual innuendo was unlikely to offend the readers of the magazine in which it appeared, who are 95% male and mostly in their 20s.

ASA: 020 7580 5555 www.asa.org.uk

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