Skip to page content Skip to main menu

ASA Adjudication on Department for Transport

Ad

A TV ad, for Department for Transport Think! campaign, featured a cartoon character of a pale young girl clutching her midriff, wearing a neck brace and with a plaster on her head. She looked at herself stepping into the road as the lights of a fast car approached. Three cartoon children, all wearing reflective bands and stickers, walked past the sad looking injured girl. The voice-over stated "The girl who didn't dress bright in the dark. She always liked to look her best, So didn't wear a nice bright vest, Or any clothing that was bright, When she was out at nearly night, But traffic couldn't see her see, And now she isn't so trendy, A car drove right into her guts, And covered her with bruisy cuts".

The ad was cleared by Clearcast who considered a timing restriction to keep it away from children was not necessary.

Issue

Five viewers, most of whom saw it on children's channels, believed the ad was unsuitable for broadcast when young children could see it, because their own children, ranging in age from four to seven, had been distressed by it.

BCAP TV Code

BCAP TV Scheduling Code

Response

The Department of Transport (DfT) said warning children about the dangers of not dressing brightly in the dark was a cornerstone of their 6-to-11-year-old Child Road Safety Policy. They said their new campaign, 'Tales of the Road', featured cartoon characters that had been injured in road accidents and were used to tell cautionary tales around specific road safety behaviour across all age groups. They said they worked hard to ensure that the campaign would educate rather than disturb children and maintained their research showed that even the youngest children engaged with the characters rather than finding them too frightening. They said they worked with Clearcast to ensure that the ad did not receive an 'ex-kids' restriction, which would have prevented the ad from being shown in or around programmes made for, or of particular interest, to children. They believed they found the correct balance by displaying the character as having already been cared for, with injuries covered by bandages and the moment of impact not shown; the ad was also set in an animated world, which they believed helped soften the impact of an unavoidably violent subject matter. DfT said as a responsible government campaign they had to strike a balance between alerting children to the serious dangers of the road, but to avoid frightening them off the road altogether. They acknowledged that five children were distressed by the ad, but believed this was a small number compared to the amount of children who had seen the ad and initial research had shown the ad was acceptable and engaging for modern children and the message was getting through.

Clearcast explained that they worked closely with the agency in order to reduce the impact of the cartoon character's injuries to a point where they believed the ad did not warrant a timing restriction and would be acceptable to be seen by children without upsetting them. They said, because they had to balance the nursery rhyme style of the voice-over with both the content of the rhyme and the visuals, they worked on the voice-over word by word to lessen the dark tone and to use words and imagery that was less potentially upsetting to children. Clearcast believed that, because the ad was aimed at children, the road safety message would be lost with a completely sanitized version, so they worked hard with the DfT and their agency to ensure the final ad conveyed the message as intended whilst retaining elements that did not warrant a timing restriction.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA understood that the ad was aimed at children between the ages of six and 11, but noted the ages of the children upset by the ad were younger than, or at the lower end of the targeted age group. We noted the efforts made by the DfT, their agency and Clearcast to tone down the material in order to avoid distressing younger children who could be more easily upset. We recognised that individual child sensitivities might vary, but nonetheless considered that older children were unlikely to have found the ad disturbing. We did not dismiss the reported distress lightly, but considered that it was not always possible to avoid causing upset to some more sensitive children and noted the ad did not appear to have adversely affected the vast majority of children who saw it. We noted the importance of the road safety message and considered that a timing restriction to keep the ad away from programmes made or aimed at children, in order to avoid upsetting some young viewers, would have seriously reduced the likelihood of children in the targeted age group from seeing it.

We concluded that a scheduling restriction in order to direct the ad away from all children was not warranted on this occasion and that the ad had been scheduled appropriately.

We investigated the ad under CAP(Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 7.4.6 (Distress) and 7.4.7 (Use of scheduling restrictions) and CAP (Broadcast) Rules on the Scheduling of Advertisements 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)