‘Soy bean suicide’ ad pulled after Ad Standards ruling
An ad from a Melbourne soy milk company that depicts soy beans happily jumping into a blender has been taken off catchup video services after Ad Standards ruled it could be interpreted as condoning suicide.
A Community Standards panel ruled the “Happylandia” ad from Happy Happy Foods breached the AANA Code of Ethics in a judgment that carefully considered the fate of the animated soy beans.
The blender scene
The premise of the ad, from Melbourne creative shop 10 Feet Tall, is that the soy bean inhabitants of Happylandia are happy to die and become soy milk.
The creative begins with a population counter at 9841, ticking down, and then depicts beans expiring in a variety of ways.
A complainant to Ad Standards said that her ten-year-old son had watched the ad and was “deeply affected” by it.
“The ad shows soybeans committing suicide. From jumping into a blender off a springboard to being shot through the chest. This is at 7.30pm at night on channel 7.”
The complaint also objected to other methods of bean destruction.
“I don’t think it is appropriate for a little cute soy bean to have an air pump placed in his bottom and be inflated! I think the appropriate orifice would be the mouth to push air into.”
The ad ends with Happylandia’s population counter falling to zero.
The Ad Standards community panel that considered the complaint was divided, with a minority considering the blender a reflection of the actual process of making soy milk.
“The majority of the Panel, however, considered that the description of the soybeans as being happy to die to be in the milk, with the visuals of them jumping into the blender, was a suggestion of suicide which was not appropriate in the promotion of this, or any, product.”
10 Feet Tall managing director Joseph Meseha told Mumbrella that while the “blender” version of the creative had been pulled, the campaign remained active with other edits.
Joseph Meseha
“To some extent we expected this,” he said. “If something cuts through, there is always some level of push back.”
Meseha said he did not think the ad presented a real encouragement to suicide.
“They are soy beans,” he said. “They are not alive.”
Overall, the Happylandia campaign had been a success and there had been significant uplift in Happy Happy Soy sales in Woolworths and Coles.
“This is part of a five-year platform [for Happy Happy Foods],” he said. “We are lucky to have a client that is extraordinarily entrepreneurial, we all understood the risks of this strategy. A challenger brand needs to present a challenge.”
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