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Ryanair attacks advertising watchdog

Sales and Marketing - News

Wednesday, 30 January 2008

Budget airline Ryanair unleashed a torrent of abuse after it rejected a decision over one of its ads by the Advertising Standards Authority.

The airline had used a picture of a fully clothed model for one of its advertisements, which ran in three UK daily newspapers.

Underneath the heading was a picture of a teenage girl or woman standing in a classroom and wearing a version of a school uniform consisting of a short tartan skirt, a cropped short sleeved shirt and tie and long white socks.

ASA said that the photo “appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour and was irresponsible and likely to cause serious or widespread offence”.

Fashionable

Ryanair said it believed that it was obvious that the image was of a woman fully clothed and that the short skirt and bare midriff were representative of the type of clothing that was fashionable among young women in the UK.

Ryanair criticised the ruling in a statement as “remarkable even by the absurd standards of the ASA (Absurd Silly Asses) quango”.

“Ryanair wonders how the attached picture of a fully clothed model can be irresponsible or offensive, when it appeared in mainstream British newspapers which frequently run pictures of topless models or photographs of celebrities in various stages of undress,” it said.

Ryanair claimed that ASA would not found the ad offensive if it ran in the tabloids, but that it was offensive because it appeared in the Herald, the Daily Mail and the Scottish Mail.

“This is clearly subjective censorship and not impartial regulation of advertising,” the airline added.

Censorship

The Herald said they had received a complaint from one reader about the ad and that they were not prepared to run it again.

The Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail said they had not received complaints direct from their readers but nevertheless would not run the ad again.

Ryanair’s Peter Sherrard said that the ASA was becoming “more Monty Pythonesque by the day”.

“This isn’t advertising regulation, it is simply censorship. This bunch of unelected, self-appointed dimwits are clearly incapable of fairly and impartially ruling on advertising,” Sherrard added.

He explained that there was nothing either irresponsible or offensive in the advert, at a time when TV and media advertising was full of suggestive and provocative images.

Sherrard vowed not to withdraw the ad and said Ryanair would not provide the ASA with any of the undertakings they seek.

Alice in Wonderland

Ryanair also criticised an ASA ruling that, even though Ryanair’s advertisement confirmed that its (Lowest Fares from Britain, all-inclusive) £10 seats were “subject to availability”, this suggested wrongly that the quoted price applied to every seat.

“Only in the Alice in Wonderland world occupied by this out of touch quango could “subject to availability” imply every seat on every flight,” according to Ryanair.

Sherrard said that the ASA failed to explain its conclusion that a £10 fare was available on every seat, when the ad specifically confirms it was “subject to availability”.

The ASA requires Ryanair to include the prefix “from” but competitor airlines such as Aer Lingus and Easyjet continue to exclude it from their advertisements.

Ryanair’s Peter Sherrard said that it was yet another clear example of a ridiculous ruling by the ASA quango whose council must consist of Alice, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter.

“Only in the ASA’s fairytale world could someone claim that a fare, which is ‘subject to availability’, should be available on every seat on every flight,” he added.

He claimed that the ASA clearly needed English lessons as the normal use of the language confused them. Sherrard also said that the ASA’s failure to act against competitor airlines highlighted its “complete bias” towards Ryanair.

“Ryanair has come to expect these daft and idiotic rulings from an organisation which recently ruled that a 1hr10 min flight was not necessarily faster than a 2hr 11 min train journey and that a £15 fare was not necessarily cheaper than a £27 fare,” Sherrard concluded.

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