Ad description
A paid-for Facebook ad for Transport for London, seen on 24 October 2025, featured a video of a black teenage boy on a bus. The teenage boy, who was turned around in his seat, said to the passenger seated behind him, "Am I not good enough for you or something? Why you not chatting to me?".
The next shot was of a white teenage boy sitting on the bus with text overlaid which stated, "Would you know how to defuse incidents of hate crime, sexual offences and harassment?". That text remained overlaid as the camera showed the left hand of a white teenage girl touching her right arm. The black teenage boy then said to her, "I said you look good and you don't wanna go out with me?"
The camera moved to the teenage girl’s face. She appeared uncomfortable and looked out of the window. The text on the screen changed to "Watch the full film to learn how to act like a friend". The black teenage boy said, "Can you hear me? Look at me when I’m talking to you".
The ad's caption stated, "To defuse incidents of hate crime, sexual offences and harassment, act like a friend. Watch the full film to learn how". The ad included a "learn more" button with a link to a YouTube video.
Issue
The complainant, who believed the ad perpetuated negative racial stereotypes about black teenage boys, challenged whether the ad was irresponsible, harmful and offensive.
Response
Transport for London t/a TFL said that they took a rigorous approach to casting to ensure they were representative of London’s diverse population across all their campaigns. They used a bespoke, casting-diversity tracker. It tracked age, ethnicity, gender and disability, and compared TFL’s casting to the London population as recorded by the March 2021 Census data for London. They believed the tracker helped to ensure that, overall, their advertising campaigns were representative of London and to reduce the risk of perpetuating negative stereotypes.
TFL said the ad, that was the subject of the complaint, was one of three short, social-media ads. All three were cut-downs from their two-minute “act like a friend” film. The two other cut-downs featured a white male committing a hate crime against a black woman and a white male committing a hate crime against another white male respectively. The film featured a diverse cast. All three cut-downs linked through to the full film and TFL believed there was a clear call to action to click through to it. TFL also believed it was clear that the cut-down, that was the subject of the complaint, was a short teaser and that there would be more to the story than just that clip.
That fuller story, as presented in the two-minute film, showed two males perpetrating an incident of sexual harassment: the main perpetrator was a black male, who verbally harassed the young girl, but he was accompanied by a white male friend, who sat down close to the victim, “boxing her in”. TFL said both characters intimidated the victim and displayed offensive behaviour.
TFL said that on Facebook a typical audience member would have been served any combination of the campaign ads three times. They said that the probability of a typical audience member only being served a single ad was estimated to be around 10% and that around 90% of their audience on Facebook were therefore exposed to at least two of the social-media cut-downs.?They estimated that the probability of a typical audience member only seeing the cut-down that was the subject of the complaint would be around 2%.
TFL also said that the social-media element of the campaign launched a week after the full film had been shown in cinemas and on ITVX, and posters had been displayed across their public-transport network. They said there had also been considerable media coverage. Social media had been only 15% of the overall campaign media spend. They therefore believed that the chances of someone who lived or worked in London, and travelled on the TFL network, only seeing the ad that was the subject of the complaint, were slim.
Assessment
Upheld
The CAP Code required marketers to ensure advertising was prepared with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society, and to avoid causing harm or offence, with particular care to be taken to avoid causing offence on grounds of various protected characteristics, including race. The ad formed part of an overall “act like a friend” campaign that encouraged Londoners to intervene safely if they witnessed sexual harassment or hate crime on the public-transport network.
The ASA understood that the campaign had been cast to reflect the diversity of London’s population. We also understood that TFL considered it highly unlikely that someone would see the ad in isolation from the storylines in the longer-form ad that featured white aggressors. However, we considered that it was nevertheless still possible to see the ad in isolation.
We understood that the ad included a “call-to-action” to click through to the longer film and noted TFL’s comment that it was clear that the ad was a teaser and that there was more to the story. However, we considered that viewers would not necessarily click through. We also considered that even if viewers did understand there was likely to be more to the story, and were aware of the longer ad and the wider campaign, that would not necessarily prevent the ad, as served in its cut-down form, from causing harm or offence, or being irresponsible. We therefore assessed the ad as it would have appeared, in-feed on Facebook.
We understood there was a negative racial stereotype based on the association between black males, including teenagers, and threatening behaviour. We assessed whether the ad reinforced that stereotype. The ad showed a black teenage boy verbally harassing a white girl. While the white male friend was shown in the ad and the two-minute film, the ad did not show him as jointly intimidating the victim. The only aggressor in the ad was the black teenage boy.
Although we understood that TFL had intended to present a range of diversity and scenarios across their campaign, we considered the ad, when seen in isolation, had the effect of perpetuating a negative racial stereotype about black men as perpetrators of threatening behaviour. On that basis, we concluded that the ad featured a harmful stereotype, was irresponsible and likely to cause serious offence.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.3 (Social responsibility) and 4.1 (Harm and offence).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Transport for London t/a TFL to ensure that future ads were socially responsible. We also told them to avoid perpetuating harmful stereotypes and causing serious offence on the grounds of race.
