Mental health jokes targeted by ad standards watchdog
The Advertising Standards Bureau has taken a stand against ads making light of people with mental health problems.
The ASB found that a print ad for Rivers clothing which made fun of mood changes expeirnced by people with bipolar disorder breached its code of ethics, along with two TV ads for car insurance company Youi. The Youi ads touched on obsessive compulsive disorder.
The ASB’s CEO Fiona Jolly said of the Rivers ad: “The intention for the advertisement to be humorous did not excuse the fact that it satirises and ridicules a feature of a mental illness over which sufferers have no control.
On the Youi ad, Jolly said: “These advertisements played on obsessive compulsive disorder and the Board was quick to agree that both ads treated people with this condition with disrespect. The intention of the advertisements to depict, or at least make the audience think of people suffering from OCD, and the growing amusement of the presenter in the advertisement with the people’s actions, was likely to be seen as condescending, cause offence and demean.”
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:09 am
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Comments
23 Jun 09
9:59 am
The ASB is doing these advertisers a favour, rarely does humour predicated on mental health actually entertain, it just makes the advertisers look desperate. When bad Rob Schneider flicks and z-grade US sitcoms resort to OCD jokes, you know that cow has been milked dry.
23 Jun 09
10:03 am
The thing was, the OCD reference really made no sense.
Plus, Lance never had OCD!!
Plus the car wasn’t even a car!
23 Jun 09
12:52 pm
Thankyou ASB for bringing these companies into line. I am sure they meant no harm but until you have been exposed to mental ilness you have no idea the ramifications of making fun of such illness.
I have a family memeber who suffers from mental illness and trust me there is nothing funny from either their perspective or the families perspective who have to help them over and over and over. Society needs to accept that mental health is about ilness just as much as any other condition and advertisers need to help not hinder the situation.
These ads were making fun of many people’s nightmare!!!
23 Jun 09
1:23 pm
Great decision and hopefully this sets the bar for advertisers who seem to think that this type of humour cuts through to their target audiences. The reality? Mental health problems are increasingly becoming common with the incidence of depression, anxiety etc and poking fun at what are often serious illnesses will only serve to polarize their brand.
23 Jun 09
5:05 pm
Lance…exactly, there was never a mention of OCD in the ad…you’re right and you don’t even know it….
23 Jun 09
5:55 pm
jack – it was pretty obviously implied. even i worked it out.
24 Jun 09
9:06 am
Yeah, I never got the connection between OCD and the product in the YOUI ad… very weird, and just weak. Poor old Lance – stuck doing lame-ass ads for insurance and banking (and pulling beers down at the Old Fitzroy in Woolloomooloo last time I saw him).
30 Jun 09
8:46 pm
weird – i just saw the Youi ad unchanged on TV during the EJ Whitten game.
9 Jul 09
4:39 pm
Rivers were quite belligerent about their “Bipolar” reversible vest ad with jabs about *mood changes* and *bipolar disorder* and *getting hundreds of emails* you can find the full case file that was upheld from my complaint on the Ad standards website BTW. Derryn Hinch at 3AW first tried to embarras them out of it. No go. Then I and other Stigma watchers reported them to Sane Australia @ sane.org.au and they found themselves in the stigma watch hall of fame for June. Did that get a response? Noway nohow. Finally when the Ad standards Board upheld the breach they replied to sane australia with an apology.
http://www.sane.org/stigmawatc.....lness.html
Now I have sense of humour but there are limits