Watchdog slams Viz over saucy smoking advert
STANDARDS watchdogs have banned a saucy advert which appeared in adult magazine Viz over claims it glamorises smoking.
A page in the Newcastle-born adult comic showed a scantily-clad woman with cigarette rolling papers appearing to float out of her handbag.
The model was pictured in silver high-heels, skimpy shorts, and sitting with her legs crossed next to the slogan: “OCB X-PERT: Europe’s Premium Cigarette Paper.”
But the risque image prompted a complaint against the cigarette papers company to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), which agreed it was irresponsible and associated glamour with smoking tobacco.
OCB Papers Ltd, which produces the cigarette papers, has been told the advert must not appear in the magazine – or anywhere else – again.
Viz is well known for its regular spoof adverts, some of which deal with controversial themes, but this is the first time a genuine ad has broken the rules.
An adjudication notice published on the ASA’s website said: “Adverts should not imply that smoking was glamorous or link smoking with people who were fashionable or possessed attributes or qualities that might reasonably be expected to command admiration.
“We considered that the woman in the ad was dressed in a stylish and glamorous manner, as though for a party or night club, and readers were likely to infer from the image that cigarette papers – and therefore smoking – were part of that individual’s life and recreational activities.
“We acknowledged that there was an element of fantasy in the image as a result of the cigarette papers apparently elevating from a handbag and drifting through the air, and recognised that readers would understand that the image was stylised and unreal. Nevertheless, we considered that the advert associated smoking and a glamorous, fashionable or sophisticated lifestyle, which was irresponsible and breached the code in relation to the marketing of cigarette rolling papers.”
The advert was deemed to breach the advertising standards code under clauses 2.2 (Responsible advertising) and 55.1 (Tobacco, rolling papers and filters).
But OCB Papers Ltd had challenged the complaint, and said the advert did not associate smoking with glamour, but rather associated a quality cigarette paper with the quality of the model featured. They pointed out that only one complaint had been made after the advert had been published throughout Europe and seen by millions of readers.
Nevertheless, the ASA’s adjudication means the cigarette papers company, who are responsible for the content of their advertising, must not publish the advert again. Nobody from Viz magazine commented on the ruling.
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