The executive chairman of Ultra Tune says he will appeal an Advertising Standards Board ruling that found one of the car servicing company’s ads vilified women.
The ad, which is part of a series of television commercials of a similar nature, features two women whose car stalls while crossing train tracks.
An incoming train then hits the car, before the women are seen walking away from the burning wreckage.
A voiceover then says, “Avoid unexpected situations” before encouraging people to have their car serviced at an Ultra Tune store.
The advertising watchdog received a number of complaints claiming the ad was “disrespectful” and “degrading” to women.
“It portrays two women as sex objects,” one person wrote.
“I would like to remind you that the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called on all Australians to make a ‘cultural shift’ and stop disrespecting women.”
Responding to the complaints, Ultra Tune denied the ad was sexist, pointing out the actors are fully clothed and the commercial has been classified PG.
However, the Advertising Standards Board ruled while the camera did not focus on the women’s “revealing clothes”, the ad did breach advertising standards because it suggested they were “unintelligent” and were “stereotypical helpless female[s]”.
Sean Buckley, the executive chairman of Ultra Tune, told SmartCompany he accepts the advertising watchdog’s decision but will be fighting it through the appropriate avenues.
“They’ve jumped on the first two ads [in this series] as being sexist and whatever, but the next two ads have male drivers in them and have already been filmed,” Buckley says.
“It’s not sexist at all, the only thing I should have done is put the male driver in the second ad. Wait until you see the six to eight ads before you jump on the first two.”
Buckley says the women in the ad do not get stuck on the train tracks because they are unintelligent, but because their car is faulty and in need of repair.
“There’s smoke coming out of it,” he says.
“We’ve had ultimately over 1 million views on our Facebook page and franchises whose sales have gone up 300%. Yet these little collective groups [those who have complained] have decided to ban it.”
“If I have to take it to the High Court, I will. It’s not about the ad, it’s about minority groups who object and then control the majority of people and that’s what I don’t like.”
Ultra Tune has discontinued the advertisement in question until an independent review of the advertising watchdog’s decision is undertaken.
However, the second instalment to the marketing campaign, which features two women in a car that falls off the side of a cliff, is still available online.
Nicole Reaney, director of InsideOut PR, told SmartCompany advertising that plays off a theme of damsels in distress can be seen by viewers as a “tired depiction” that has been done before.
“When creating advertising campaigns, companies need to consider their target audience, and then every other stakeholder that can have a view of the ad,” Reaney says.
“Test market campaigns with a select group in order to identify various perceptions.”
Broede Carmody is a former senior SmartCompany reporter. Before this, he was a co-editor of RMIT University’s student magazine Catalyst.
