Advertising Standards Board tightens net on Facebook advertising: Slams livestock business for “degrading” Facebook ad

Its ruling also pointed out that:

• “The image depicts the woman in a position in which she is compared to an animal, with a suggestion also of commodification (i.e. that there is, as there is in shearing, many others to be shorn).”
• “The representation of the woman as a sheep being shorn was irrelevant to the service advertised.”
• “The impact of the advertisement as a whole is exploitative of women and is also degrading.”

The ASB found the advertisement breached the industry’s code and noted Shear Ewe confirmed it would remove the image from its Facebook page as soon as it could.

The owner of Shear Ewe, Cory Thompson, told SmartCompany he would not take the ad down until he received a hard copy of the ASB determination.

“The ABS has telephoned me but I’ll be pulling it down when I’ve got the mail, at the moment I don’t have internet access anyway,” he says.

Thompson says the initial determination only applied to a flyer and he is continuing to use the advertisement in other ways.

“The initial complaint about it was for the flyer, not for Facebook. They are not taking a case against every logo I’ve got,” he says.

“I still use the logo on my business cards at the moment but once my business cards are used up I’m going to be working with a graphic designer to design a new logo.”

John Swinson, partner at King & Wood Mallesons, told SmartCompany the decision reinforces ASB rulings that Facebook pages can be an advertising medium.

Swinson says the ABS ruling is not a surprise because if you have a ruling that says an advertisement is inappropriate and you take the ad away but leave it on your Facebook page, it is still going to be inappropriate advertising.

“It shows a misunderstanding that the law in relation to online activities is different to traditional mediums,” he says.

“It is a common misconception that the law does not apply to cyberspace.”

In fact, Swinson argues businesses have to be more wary of advertisements on Facebook than on mediums such as newspapers and flyers.

“You have to be more careful on Facebook than traditional advertising because it potentially has a wider audience, Facebook is available to more people in more geographical locations,” Swinson says.

“What might be acceptable for putting in a flyer in a mailbox in Melbourne might not be acceptable in an advertisement in Indonesia or Singapore, it’s actually more complicated online,” he says.