This story is sponsored by Paddy Power
UK advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld its February decision to ban Paddy Power’s controversial transgender Cheltenham advert.
The Irish operator’s Ladies’ Day ad for the Cheltenham Festival (pictured above) which asked viewers to pick out the ‘stallions’ from the ‘mares’ by deciding whether the race-goers featured were men or women, was pulled from UK television screens after the ASA received complaints from viewers calling it ‘degrading’, ‘hateful’ and ‘transphobic’.
Following an investigation, the ASA this morning upheld that intial decision, stating that while it “considered that by suggesting that trans women would look like men in drag and that their gender could be speculated on as part of a game”, the ad was in breach of advertising codes governing social responsibility and harm and offence because the ad “irresponsibly reinforced negative stereotypes” and “condoned and encouraged harmful discriminatory behaviour and treatment.”
Paddy Power had defended itself by arguing it had taken care to comply with “the spirit and the letter” of the relevant codes, and had consulted transgender support group the Beaumont Society on the script to “ensure that the sensitivities of the transgender and transsexual communities were taken into account.”
But the Beaumont Society said that the part of the voiceover stating “dog, I mean man” that accompanied the shot of a woman walking out of a men’s toilet, that breached BCAP Code rule 4.2, had not not been included in the copy of the script submitted to them for approval. The ASA deemed ” the reference to a woman as a dog” as “likely to cause serious offence to women generally and trans women specifically.”
The support group did however admit it had been responsible for Paddy Power using the term “transgendered”, which they now understood to be offensive to some sections of the community they served.
February’s ban followed just days after that handed out to another of Paddy Power’s ads, Chav Tranquiliser, which featured people being shot with tranquiliser darts in an attempt to remove the ‘chavs’ from the Cheltenham Festival.
The ASA’s remit does not however cover Paddy Power’s Irish-registered YouTube channel, where the Ladies Day ad, promoted by Paddy Power as a “banned TV ad”, has now racked up more than 600,000 views, with Chav Tranquiliser clocking up more than 1.4 million.
For more on Paddy Power’s headline-grabbing promotions, visit PaddyPower.com.
