Bladder leakage ‘bullying’ ad cleared by watchdog
A TV commercial for Poise pantyliners in which a book club laughs about light bladder leakage has been cleared by the Advertising Standards Board of a complaint that it encourages bullying.
In the ad, women sitting in the meeting start talking about what causes LBL for them. One of them says laughing triggers her condition, leading to the group starting to laugh.
Complaints received by the Ad Standards Board (ASB) included:
They are talking about LBL, and one of the ladies says that she has it when she laughs. Others in the group start laughing, and she says “Don’t”, the whole group is then laughing. I FEEL THIS IS ACTUALLY A TYPE OF BULLYING, especially when she has asked them not to. The lady confides a problem she has, with the others starting her off laughing, show little respect for her and her LBL problem or the problem she has confided to them.”
Poise’s approach to LBL is positioned around the “it happens to me” line and encourages women to “join the conversation”. It is directly opposed to the view of another campaign by Tena that maintains “The world doesn’t have to know” and has derided Poise’s approach as “the sisterhood of suffering”.
Poise, owned by Kimberly-Clark, stated their positioning on the subject in their response to the ASB.
The advertisement was developed to normalise light bladder leakage and to encourage women to feel comfortable talking about the condition. The tone was intended to be light but also to be empathic and respectful to our consumers and potential consumers.
It was not our intention in this advertisement to create a scenario whereby one of the women was bullied or was seen to be the “butt” of any joke at the expense of any of the other woman.
Rather, it was to bring alive the fact that this condition can and does affect a number of women and as such is something that can be discussed and can be discussed in a manner that is not necessarily medicalised or gravely serious in tone.”
Kimberly-Clark said the ad was shown to 200 women to ensure it did not offend and found “the advertisement was enjoyable and felt they could identify with the situation (which was the outcome that we were seeking to achieve).”
Dismissing the complaint, the ASB said the woman is amused rather than upset by the reaction to her trigger.
It determined: “The board considered that the tone of laughter is one of amusement rather than mockery and that in the context of a group of friends discussing a delicate issue the overall depiction is one of a group of women comfortable enough with one another to discuss light bladder leakage in a non-judgemental manner the advertisement did not depict, condone or encourage bullying and determined that the advertisement did not depict material which would be in breach of the Code.”
FFS, you might not like this ad, but it is NOT bullying. Every time you don’t like something don’t label it as bullying.
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Bullying = taking the “piss” out of someone? Glad to see the standards board knocked this one on the head as I fear for the future of this country if this type of PC policing can gain merit.
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I fear we’re being bullied by the ‘anti-bullying league’.
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The ad is atrocious. badly scripted and badly acted. But it’s not bullying as they’re all laughing along with each other.
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I agree with the original complaint, it is bullying. Its just like the ‘Not Happy Jan’ Yellow Pages commercial. That was an internal matter between Jan and her employer, not something that the whole nation needed to see.
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