A pre-roll ad for Comedy Central programme ‘East Mode with Nigel Ng’ has been banned for featuring “sexually explicit” language that children may have heard and seen.
Members of the public contacted the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to challenge whether the ad was ” irresponsibly targeted” as it supposedly featured before a show that appealed to the interest of children.
In the promotion for the programme, a young man’s parents ask him about the nature of his unsuccessful love life. After the son’s lack of response, the parents say, “We have arranged for you a f[bleep] buddy.” The word fuck was partially censored.
Phrases like “Cum chums”, “pound pals”, “d in the v action” and ”pegging” are then used as the parents embark on interviewing possible ‘candidates’ for their son.
The ad was seen before a YouTube video called ’10 Most Powerful Prehistoric Animals that Ever Existed’ on the ‘Facts Machine’ channel.
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With regards to claims that children may have seen the ad, Paramount, the owners of Comedy Central, responded by acknowledging that the ad was not suitable for children but also stated that the Facts Machine YouTube channel was not specifically labelled as “Made for kids”.
“This meant that adult content would not be completely restricted, and some ads suitable for adults might be shown, especially if the channel was viewed via a device logged into an adult user’s account,” the ASA added.
As for the ‘profane’ language, the production company believed that the ad was “light-hearted and comedic” and, because of that, “unlikely” to cause serious or widespread offence.
Despite Paramount’s defence, the brand did in fact decide to remove the ad following a review in concurrence with Google Ads.
The advertising watchdog itself acknowledged that the ad was intended to be “humorous and irreverent”, but nevertheless noted that unsuspecting viewers were likely to be offended.
The authority also realised that targeting exclusions had proven to be insufficient and therefore asked Paramount UK to take care to avoid causing serious or widespread offence in future advertisements.
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