Our article on ads for baby products is now one year old – they grow up so fast! To celebrate its birthday, we’ve prepared some crib notes on ads featuring babies and young children.
Let Kids Be Kids
Ads must not portray children in a sexual way. This ruling concerned an ad for a child’s swimming costume, which was being modelled by a young girl. The swimming costume itself was age-appropriate, but the girl appeared to be wearing heavy make-up and was posing with her hip popped to one side and glancing downwards at the bow on her side. As the girl’s stylisation and posing was typical of older models, the ad was considered to portray the girl in a sexual way.
Sheer Potty-cock
A blog post on an advertiser’s website claimed that reusable nappies helped children potty train earlier than those who wore disposable nappies. When asked for proof of this claim, the advertiser produced self-reported data from an online questionnaire, answered by just over 2,000 parents. The ASA considered that this data was not sufficient to substantiate the claim, as it had not be independently verified, and did not consider other factors that might have had an impact on the age at which children became successfully potty trained. The bottom line was that the claim was not supported by the evidence provided.
Sleep Tight, and Sleep Right
The ASA has previously upheld against an ad that showed a baby in an unsafe sleep position, but our precedent has grown since then.
The ASA received complaints about a TV ad showing a baby lying on their front in a cot with soft toys. The complainants believed that the baby was shown in a sleep position associated with Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI) and challenged whether the ad condoned an unsafe practice.
The ASA did acknowledge that NHS Guidance stated that babies who were not capable of rolling themselves over should be placed on their back to sleep. The ASA considered that the baby appeared to be over six months old and was shown being able to support his own head. They believed that this indicated that he was old enough to roll himself over. The ad also did not show how the baby had been placed when he was put down in the cot, and the scene of him in the cot was very brief.
All these factors combined led the ASA to determine that the ad did not condone or encourage an unsafe practice.
Tender Topics
Make sure you think through the implications of your ads and handle sensitive subjects with care.
A cinema ad for a vegan charity used tropes from horror films, implying that a baby had been killed after being kidnapped, to raise awareness of the practices of the dairy industry.
Even though the ad was surreal and did not show any graphic imagery, the ASA determined that the comparison between loss of a baby and animal welfare was likely to be seen as insensitive and cause unjustified distress, particularly by those with experience of loss or trauma around parenthood.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water
If you think your ads have teething problems, you can contact the Copy Advice team for more guidance!
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