The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an “offensive” campaign from online Halal investment platform, Wahed.
The ASA board launched an investigation after receiving 75 complaints that the ads were offensive. It ruled that the ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 4.1 (Harm and offence).
The out-of-home campaign ran on various Transport for London services including the London Underground. It contained six posters that featured US Dollar and Euro banknotes on fire.
According to the ASA, the posters could cause serious offense to tourists visiting from abroad as currency is a large part of someone’s national identity.
Explaining its decision the ASA said: “We considered some viewers, particularly people from the United States or Eurozone countries, would have viewed their nation’s currency as being culturally significant and a symbol of their national identity.
“Although we acknowledged Wahed Invest’s view that they had not directly criticised a specific group, and that depictions of burning banknotes were commonly encountered, we considered the burning of banknotes would have caused serious offence to some viewers. We, therefore, concluded that the ads were likely to cause serious offence.”
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Wahed, in response to the ASA’s investigation, argued that the ads’ purpose was to highlight that “when inflation grew faster than the rate of savings, money was akin to ‘going up in flames”.
The firm added that it believed that “The burning of banknotes was not offensive and was portrayed in popular culture, like film and TV.”
Furthermore, the investment firm highlighted that phrases such as money to burn’ and ‘burning a hole in my pocket’ were part of the common lexicon.
It added that “had the idea of burning money been a cause for widespread offence, such language or visual representations would not be as commonly used or as easily understood in society as it was.”
However, the ASA ruled that the ads were banned and Wahad Invest should ensure future ads did not cause serious offense or contain images of burning US dollars or Euro banknotes.
