banned british adverts

I don’t watch live television, so most adverts pass me by until I deliberately sit down to watch them. When I tried a selection presented as banned or controversial UK adverts, I found plenty to argue with. Sometimes I understood the complaint. Sometimes I really didn’t.

The question I kept coming back to was whether being memorable actually made an advert good. I would certainly remember a McDonald’s advert connecting a dead father with a Filet-O-Fish, but that didn’t mean it made me want the sandwich. Marmite, meanwhile, had me laughing at a joke that implicated a jar in my own cupboard.

McDonald’s found a connection I didn’t want

The McDonald’s story followed a child asking his mum what his dad had been like. By the time she told him that a Filet-O-Fish had been his dad’s favourite too, I was wondering how we’d arrived there. Grief and a fish sandwich. There’s a lot to unpack.

I could understand why people were upset by that connection. It was memorable enough that I’d talk about it, but probably for the wrong reason, and it didn’t leave me desperate to order the food. I don’t think I’d ever even had a Filet-O-Fish when I watched it.

My own order would be a Quarter Pounder with cheese, a large fry and maybe twenty nuggets on the side. Twenty nuggets for dessert, obviously. Maybe a Big Mac if I hadn’t had one for a while.

Why did the chicken upset people?

KFC’s “The Whole Chicken” went in a different direction, with a dancing chicken and a song I thought was great. It also went on for what felt like ages. I was trying to work out whether the point was that KFC had especially badass chickens.

I read an explanation during the video saying viewers had complained that the advert was disrespectful to chickens and distressing. That was the objection I couldn’t get my head around. If you eat chicken, where do you think it comes from? It’s an animal. Maybe people don’t like the reminder, but that’s still the reality.

Other adverts raised objections I could at least understand. Ryanair’s “Jab and Go” linked forthcoming coronavirus vaccines with booking holidays, and my first thought was that it made light of a situation where people were dying. I also recognised that an airline was trying to get people back onto its planes. Those were my reactions to an advert from that period, rather than advice about travel or vaccination.

Getting the joke isn’t always liking it

The For Goodness Shakes advert made shaking a protein drink look like masturbation. I understood the practical bit because I usually had clear whey after the gym, and making that dissolve took a lot of shaking. The advert stretched the joke for longer than I needed, and the shaking sound made it particularly gross.

Still, gross and memorable can go together. I got what it was doing and didn’t think it deserved a ban simply because the joke was a bit much. A Paddy Power advert used the same sort of joke, with the motion of gambling on a phone in your pocket suggesting masturbation too. That got a less enthusiastic response from me. I understood it. I hated it. Understanding an advert doesn’t oblige me to enjoy it.

Marmite came for my cupboard

My favourite was Marmite’s mock rescue operation. The advert treated forgotten jars as neglected creatures, with a team finding them in cupboards, carrying them away in little cages and taking them to a re-homing centre. Putting a jar through that whole rescue process was ridiculous, and I loved it.

Unfortunately, I could have appeared in it. I’d bought Marmite years earlier for a video, discovered I didn’t like it, then kept the jar because I thought I’d use it for something else eventually. At the time I watched the advert, it was still at the back of the cupboard, hardened, with the lid stuck shut.

I could see that the rescue story made light of abuse and neglect, which was why I wondered whether it had attracted complaints. I also thought it was very funny. Both reactions could exist at once. Seeing those jars in the little cages at the re-homing centre brought tears to my eyes from laughing, while my own forgotten Marmite sat there making me part of the joke.

Watch british adverts I understood, and a dancing chicken I didn’t in the original video.