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Dan Ilic: We pretended to be outraged over Dick Smith ad ban

ilic ninestream liveThe man behind Dick Smith’s “censored” Australia Day ad has admitted that its so-called ban was a stunt designed to generate media coverage.

The ad for Dick Smiths Foods was created by producer and comedian Dan Ilic. It generated extensive media coverage after Smith complained that the innuendo-laden ad had been denied a early evening time slot.

Interviewed on Nine News’ new 9StreamLive online news show, Ilic – who also appears on Ten’s Can Of Worms – revealed that a G-rated version of the ad was approved for the timeslot, but the racier version was not.

Ilic said: “We kind of pretended that it wasn’t a laughing matter for a couple of days to spark media interest. Luckily the media bought it.

“Dick called me from China and said ‘This is great, Dan. Our PG ad has been banned. We’ll tell everyone that we can’t run the PG ad in the timeslot.'”

Ilic said that in fact the only network which had declined to run the ad was Nine, although it was willing to run it in a later slot or on Go.

Ilic said: “We got two days of media. It was fantastic.”

Ilic’s comments come about 39minutes into this video:

The 9StreamLive show went out last Tuesday, but the replay video was uploaded to YouTube just before the weekend.

The “banned” Dick Smith ad:

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