ASA Adjudication on Department for Education & Skills

Ad

A TV ad, for Adult Basic Skills, featured a gremlin that taunted a woman about her lack of qualifications. The gremlin appeared distressed when the woman took out a newly acquired educational certificate. Its head and body exploded, sending thick green slime onto the ceiling and walls. A voiceover said “Get rid of your gremlins”.

Issue

The complainants, whose children were between two and five years of age and were upset by the exploding gremlin, objected that the ad was frightening to young children and should carry a stricter scheduling restriction.

BCAP TV Code

BCAP TV Scheduling Code

Response

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) apologised for any distress caused to children who viewed the ad.  They said, when it was first developed in 2004, they worked closely with the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) to ensure the ad was acceptable for broadcast.  They explained that, due to complaints made when it was first aired in 2004, the ad now carried a post 7.30pm restriction as directed by an Ofcom ruling.  They said that restriction was specifically designed to ensure that young children did not see the ad.  

The DfES said the target audience for the gremlins ad was adults and both their media buyers and the broadcasters had been instructed to advertise in and around programmes aimed at adults, not children.  They argued that there were millions of people across the country who were held back in life and work because of poor literacy and numeracy skills, and that the gremlins ad encouraged adults to improve those skills.  

The DfES acknowledged that the gremlins characters were a challenging image but maintained that they had been an extremely successful device in raising awareness of skills issues and encouraging adults to admit their basic skills problems.  They pointed out that over 350,000 people had called the helpline in direct response to the ad and many more had contacted their local college as a result, making it one of the most successful Government ad campaigns ever run.  

The BACC confirmed that the ad carried a post 7.30pm timing restriction imposed by Ofcom in October 2004; Ofcom had considered the previous ex-kids restriction inadequate and commented that the 7.30pm restriction 'should help to keep material away from younger viewers who could be watching television (other than just childrens programmes) at other times of the day.  The BACC said the ad had continued to have a post 7.30pm restriction since the adjudication.  

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA noted several young children had reacted badly to the portrayal of the exploding gremlin.  We considered the realistic nature of the animation and the startling explosion were likely to distress some viewers under five years old.  We noted, however, the complaints referred to a long-running ad campaign featuring gremlins.  We noted the 2004 Ofcom restriction following 94 complaints and that the number of complaints had subsided dramatically since the imposition of the post 7.30pm scheduling restriction.  We acknowledged that the advertising campaign had been very successful in encouraging its target audience, adults, to seek help with literacy and numeracy skills.  We noted much of that success could be attributable to the ad being screened during popular early evening programmes such as soaps and that a stricter, post 9pm restriction would mean that the ad would not reach a large proportion of the target audience.  We considered that a post 7.30pm restriction minimised the risk that very young children would see the ad and that that was borne out by the relatively small number of recent complaints.  We concluded that the ad was unlikely to cause harm or distress to children, and that the post 7.30pm scheduling restriction was still appropriate.  

We investigated the ad under CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 7.3.1 (Mental harm), 7.3.6 (Distress) and 7.3.7 (Use of scheduling restrictions) and CAP (Broadcast) Rules on the Scheduling of Advertising rule 4.2.3 (Treatments unsuitable for children) but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)