BACK IN APRIL there was one ad on everybody’s lips.
This Protein World billboard:
There was backlash. Boy oh boy was there backlash. Accusations of body shaming and sexism were rife, and brands like Carlsberg made the most of the issue with their responses.
Now, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has found that the ad was “not irresponsible” and was “unlikely to cause offence”.
The ASA had initially banned the ad because of the claims of weight loss being attributed to the product. The ASA told Protein World that the ad “could not appear again in its current form”.
A seperate investigation was undertaken to ascertain if the ad “was in breach of the advertising rules on harm, offence and social responsibility”. The ASA had recieved 378 complaints on these grounds.
It found that the term “beach body” was a term well understood to mean a “toned athletic physique”but that the image of the woman accompanying the headline did not imply “that a different body shape to that shown was not good enough or was inferior”.
The ASA also found that the ad would not shame women into thinking they needed a slimming supplement to feel confident wearing swimwear, and therefore was not irresponsible.
