DFS Ad Complaints Rejected By ITC

Its hard to offend with a sofa, unless there are TV DIY make-over teams in the vicinity, but this feat was achieved by DFS when 65 viewers complained about its TV advertisement during August. The commercial quoted spoof statistics in answer to the question “What turns you on?”. Accompanying visuals for “46% of you get hot for ice-cream”” were a half dressed couple throwing ice cream at each other, while the line “36% of you are into leather” showed a woman pulling on a pair of leather trousers and a woman dressed in leather cracking a whip. The concluding line was “And you’ll go wild for 4 years interest free credit…Go down to DFS this week and see what turns you on.”

Most of the complaints were with regard to the fact that the ad was scheduled in pre-watershed slots. Complainants felt the ad was unsuitable for children to see. It was also felt that the sexual references in the commercial were “in poor taste and irrelevant to the products being advertised.”

The ITC noted that the BACC had restricted scheduling so that the advert would not be shown around children’s programming. It concluded that as the images were in no way sexually explicit and the intended humour relied on innuendo which would not be understood by children, that the BACC restriction was adequate and did not uphold the complaints.

ITC: 020 7306 7743 www.itc.org.uk

Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive