The U.K. advertising regulator has banned a cancer campaign after concluding the material is “likely to cause serious or widespread offense” and is “inappropriate for display in an untargeted medium where it could be seen by children.”
Last year, the nonprofit GirlVsCancer worked with the ad agency BBH on billboards that went up across London. The outdoor posters for the “Smash the Stigma” campaign were intended to spark conversation about how cancer can affect sex and intimacy. However, two people took umbrage and complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
Here’s how ASA described the contentious poster. “The ad featured a close-up image of a woman’s torso, as she held one of her breasts in her hand, with her arm obscuring her other breast. The top of her other hand was placed between her legs. Large white text the length of the image stated ‘cancer won’t be the last thing that f*cks me’,” the ASA wrote.
The complainants challenged whether the ad was likely to cause offense and inappropriate for display in an untargeted medium. GirlVsCancer told the ASA the ad represents the real-life experience of women regarding sex and cancer—and the emotions they generate. While accepting the poster may make some people uncomfortable, the nonprofit believed it was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offense.
GirlVsCancer noted that “both of the model’s breasts had been covered, and no other body parts beyond her main torso were visible,” the ASA wrote, and argued “the use of the word ‘fuck’ was in-keeping with and necessary for the campaign message and creative execution.” The model was a cancer survivor. The poster wasn’t put up within 100 meters of a school.
The ASA acknowledged that “the ad was meant to represent the lived experience of women who had, or who had survived, cancer, and had been created to raise awareness of the subject.” However, aspects of the poster went too far for the agency.
“We considered that ‘fuck’ was a word so likely to offend that it should not generally be used or alluded to in advertising, even if viewers would understand that the ads were intended to raise awareness of women’s experience with cancer. We further considered that, within the context of the ad, the image was sufficiently sexually explicit to be likely to offend viewers,” the ASA wrote in its assessment.
That reasoning led the ASA to conclude that the ad breached its rules on social responsibility and harm and offense. The ASA told GirlVsCancer not to run the ad in the same form again, and to take care in the future. GirlVsCancer continues to use the imagery and phrases on its website.