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MediaJuly 10, 2020

The year’s most entertaining ad complaints rubbished by the ASA

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From eggplant emojis and twerking llamas to sweaty anthropomorphic butts, we present some of the most fascinating, hilarious and outrageous complaints dismissed by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) from 2019 to now.

Avocadon’t (January 2019)

The ad: In this ad from Specsavers, a man gets ready to join a cricket match, but when he reaches for his groin protector he accidentally grabs half an avocado instead. He proceeds to then shove the ripe, uneaten avocado in his pants and awkwardly shimmy it in place. “Should’ve gone to Specsavers,” the voiceover tuts (more like should’ve gone to the doctor – has the man lost all feeling in his balls? I guess we’ll never know).

The complaint: This ad received not just one, not just two, but three complaints in total. One objected to a groin protector being on a table full of food (which is actually kinda gross), while another felt it disrespected the mighty avocado when “so many people don’t have the luxury of eating it”.

A third complainant didn’t appreciate the ad’s “objectional sexual overtones of a cricketer grinding in delight”, adding that while it was “obviously” funny to men, it was “totally sick and objectionable to women”.

The decision: The chair noted that Specsavers was using light-hearted humour and that it was unlikely to cause “serious or widespread offence”. On whether the cricketer was grinding in delight to his avocado, the chair was of the opinion that he was “attempting to manoeuvre the avocado half … into the correct position, with understandable difficulty”. No grounds to proceed.

Bad Nick (January 2019)

The ad: In an attempt to raise awareness on the importance of consent, this online ad from Netsafe shows a text exchange between three friends called TK, Jimmy and Nick. Nick, however, takes things way too far when he shares a photo of a nude woman in their group chat. His friends quickly tell him off, saying it’s “NOT cool to share her nudes”. The ad ends with the hashtag #DontBeANick.

The complaint: The complainant (who we can safely assume is called Nick) took issue with Netsafe for supposedly equating “being a Nick” with nonconsensual sharing of nudes. “This is tarring the reputation of all people named Nick solely on the basis of their name.” Poor Nick.

The decision: The chair ruled the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence “in light of generally prevailing community standards”. No grounds to proceed. Sorry Nick.

Deliciously dirty (March 2019)

The ad: The exact clip in question seems to have gone AWOL (the above is a version featuring Angella Dravid), but apparently, the ad was to promote Wendy’s limited edition Dirty American range that featured burgers with “a deliciously creamy, tangy dirty sauce”. The ad ended with the phrase: “the Dirty American Range – it’s deliciously dirty”.

The complaint: “I find this very offensive,” the complainant wrote. “I’m offended by the adjective dirty being used to describe food from my culture.”

What was the decision? No grounds to proceed, because the “dirty” refers to the burger’s dirty sauce – a real sauce made of mayo and mustard originally from the US.

‘A high five would be more appropriate’ (April 2019)

The ad: This ad for Meadow Fresh shows a young girl going to the local dairy to get milk. The parents seem worried about letting her go alone, but the girl manages to successfully purchase a carton after which the dairy owner texts the parents to let her know she’s OK. When she returns, she’s welcomed home by both her parents with her father giving her a big hug.

The complaint: For a seemingly harmless commercial about getting milk, this ad received a total of four complaints. One complainant felt it was wrong to depict a young girl going on an errand by herself “unawear [sp] of what could be lurking around the corner”, while another took issue with the girl using her parents’ Eftpos card in a shameless breach of the bank’s terms and conditions.

A third was offended by both the Eftpos card and the lack of supervision, writing:

“We try protect our children the child is no more than 7 why would you let any child walk by themselves anywhere especially a girl… we all no that this can change in a blink of an eye.. the other problem I have is she has her mums eftpos card isn’t this illegal… the mother would have her accounts closed for doing this and but yet meadow fresh are promoting this is ok!!!”

A fourth complainant simply had a weird issue around the hug:

“At the very end when the dad grabs the daughter and hugs her close and tries to put her on his knee, It seems to be a inappropriate type of hug a high five would be more appropriate maybe”

The decision: The chair ruled that the ad depicted “a carefully controlled scenario” and was unlikely to “encourage or condone a dangerous practice or a disregard for safety”. On the Eftpos card issue, it was noted that while the practice wasn’t ideal, the ad showed the parents giving the child the card to buy milk and had therefore “chosen to take the risk regarding the card’s usage”. Therefore, no grounds to proceed (including the one about hug).

??? (May 2019)

The ad: To celebrate 10 years in the telco business, 2degrees released this ad using emojis to explain how the company had been “fighting for fair”, kicking off with the phrase: “10 years ago, New Zealand’s telcos were acting like eggplant emojis…”

The complaint: It appears the complainant had a very rude awakening, writing in to say:

“I think its crude that 2 degrees is using the eggplant emoji – I did not know this until my daughter asked me what that means by egg plant emoji upon looking it up the egg plant emoji also refers to a mans penis”

The decision: “Consumers who were familiar with the eggplant emoji were unlikely to take serious offence to its use in this context, while those who did not know the meaning would not understand the reference,” the chair ruled. No grounds to proceed.

Booty bot (July 2019)

The ad: In this Zuru ad, Boppi the Booty Shakin’ Llama proceeds to tear up the dancefloor as it “shakes its head and bops its hind quarters”. Fun times.

The complaint: The complainant felt Boppi’s booty-bangin’ ways had no place on kids’ primetime TV, writing in to say:

“Boppi the Booty Shakin’ Llama is incredibly worthy of complaint as it breaches rule 1 (f) of the Children and Young Peoples Advertising Code as ownership encourages a sexualised behaviour (twerking) which is incredibly inappropriate for children.

It also depicts families, including young people, ’shaking their booties’ and, even though this is done in a somewhat playful manner, it breaches rule 1 (d) by portraying people under the age of 18 in a way that is inappropriate for their age. This product is clearly inappropriate for children and advertisement of it is an obvious breach of advertising standards.”

The decision: The chair ruled that the likely consumer takeout was one of “innocent fun” and that only the ad’s mother character really “wiggled her bottom”. Even then it was more of a “side-to-side motion” rather than a “thrusting action” typical of twerking. No grounds to proceed. Wiggle on, folks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBJft_V3dXg

Glo-ball warming (September 2019)

The ad: To highlight its temperature cooling technology, underwear brand Bonds released an ad showing various men’s testicles being monitored with a thermal camera. “Fight glo-ball warming in a pair of Bonds X Temp with ball-cooling technology,” it says. “Science, join the fight today!”

The complaint: The complaint was that the ad shamelessly exploited the very serious issue of climate change to sell underwear targeted at very sweaty balls.

“This is false advertising, and I am deeply offended by the way that it trivialised such a serious issue facing the planet and its inhabitants to sell Underpants. Wearing Bonds will not help climate change in fact the carbon footprint of bonds underpants is undoubtedly quite high due to the shipping and manufacture.”

What was the decision? It was noted that the ad used a play on words to highlight the product’s features and that at no point did it make any claims about “global” but rather “glo-ball” warming. No grounds to proceed. Bollocks.

Chafing, as told by an 11-year-old (December 2019)

The ad: In this legendary ad for Neat 3B Body Powder and Action Cream – whose jingle was ranked fourth-best New Zealand jingle of all time – an animated set of anthropomorphic body parts sweat and chafe to an unusual rhythm. “Don’t suffer any longer!” the ad exclaims – 3B is here for your sore, sad butt.

The complaint: This wonderfully kitsch commercial is a classic, but this Zoomer isn’t a fan:

“HI IM 11 YEARS Old

i am complaining about this advert for 3b cream.It shows moving breasts and moving groin and it is a bit offensive to women .And inappropriate for young minds like mine.I am not saying you should ban the advert because that would be unfair for the advertisers but you could put the advert on later when younger children are in bed.”

The decision: Ignoring the fact that this “11 year old” is worried about their “young mind”, the chair said it didn’t consider the ad to be exploitative, “nor could the animated type illustrations be seen to be using sexual appeal”. No grounds to proceed.

Sunshine – not for everyone (December 2019)

The ad: Just your typical, upbeat, summery cold drink ad (you know the one), this time by Lipton Ice Tea.

The complaint: The complainant took issue with the phrase “sunshine is good for everything”, pointing out that “it is not good for skin cancer, therefore the ad is misleading and determental [stet] to societal wellbeing. It should be removed immediately as it encourages unprotected sun exposure.”

The decision: Considering the ad’s overall context, the chair ruled that the phrase was “a generalised, hyperbolic statement that was not intended to be interpreted literally.” No grounds to proceed.

‘We speak NZ English here’ (February 2020)

The ad: In an ad promoting the Shen Yun Performing Arts show, a voiceover tells viewers to visit “ShenYun.com/NZ” for more info. But instead of pronouncing “NZ” as “En Zed”, it uses the American pronunciation “En Zee”. You can’t hear it in the video above because it’s the generic global version, but you get the idea.

The complaint: “We speak NZ English not American here, so it should be said ‘N Zed’,” the complainant protested. “This influences kids to mispronounce their language as has happened since Sesame Street was launched. This makes it extremely hard, nay on impossible for parents and schools to correct.”

The decision: Despite the shocking assault on our language, the complaint had no grounds to proceed.

Calling bull (February 2020)

The ad: To promote its plant-based Rebel Whopper burger, this Burger King ad travelled to the small town of Bulls to test just how well its residents knew their beef. The video shows a number of people trying the burger in front of a Burger King who are surprised when they hear the burger has no meat.

The complaint: This ad is accused of being misleading, but not for the reasons you think:

“Burger King are asking the people of Bulls what they think of their new vegan burger, this ad gives the impression that Bulls has a BurgerKing, by interviewing persons from Bulls outside a BurgerKing premises! This is impossible as they dont have one!!!”

The decision: Honestly, the complainant kind of makes a good point. But the chair found it had no grounds to proceed because although some viewers might get the impression that the video of the tasting was filmed in Bulls, the voiceover doesn’t actually explicitly state this. Instead, it refers to “the people of Bulls” and shows people standing in front of a non-specific Burger King.

“They wanted people from the Bulls beef farming community to be among the first to try the new burger. They visited the town and locals who were interested in trying the new burger were invited to the Upper Hutt Burger King restaurant for filming,” the chair wrote after talking with a Burger King spokesperson. “She said there are no plans at present to open a Burger King in Bulls.”

#FreeNugget (March 2020)

The ad: “When I first met Nugget he was stuck in a hole,” says a woman dressed up as a Metamucil bottle along with two men dressed up as a colon and a poo. “But I’ve been pushing him hard. Now Nugget is healthy and regular!” No doubt a career highlight for all actors involved.

The complaint: “I find this advert showing people dressed up as a colon and faeces to be both degrading and socially irresponsible,” the complainant wrote. “Have we come so far as a race that personal problems (constipation) are now to be just a snigger!”

The decision: The chair ruled that while some viewers may find the subject to be unpleasant and distasteful, the “lighthearted nature of the advertisement helped to offset offence”. No grounds to proceed.

TMI (April 2020)

The ad: In this Libra ad, various clips relating to periods are shown, including red liquid being poured onto a sanitary pad, a pixelated pad being removed from underwear, and blood running down a woman’s leg in the shower. The ad asks: “Why is it considered unacceptable to show period blood? Periods are normal. Showing them should be too.”

The complaint: While period ads frequently incite a burning fury among ASA complainants, this particular complainant took it to a whole new level – a 1,200-word rant kind of level. Here’s a short excerpt:

“Sure, periods and blood are normal, socially, but that’s not something I want to see on TV/videos. Me jizzing in my girlfriend is normal, but no one wants to see that either, nor should they have to just because I have some weird need to ‘normalize’ it. To be honest I find this quite disgusting. Shit coming out my ass is normal too; no one needs to see that on TV. Whether it is blood or not running down her leg is irrelevant. It’s implied enough, the same way if I have something that looks like poo but isn’t running down my leg–it’s obscene.”

What was the decision? No grounds to proceed. Also please, don’t shit in the shower.

Keep going!
Image: Madeline Bradley / supplied
Image: Madeline Bradley / supplied

MediaJuly 10, 2020

Deryk is her name. Will the world know it by the year’s end?

Image: Madeline Bradley / supplied
Image: Madeline Bradley / supplied

A new EP from an unknown Auckland singer ignited a bidding war before she’d released a single. Today ‘Call You Out’ is released, with eerie parallels to Lorde’s rise. Duncan Greive meets the artist known as Deryk.

Madeline Bradley wasn’t expecting a lot. She’d been to dozens of these meetings over the past four years – only 22, yet already near washing out of the music industry, her confidence lost, unable to get the songs in her head onto tape.

Justyn Pilbrow felt much the same. He’d returned to New Zealand from LA six months earlier, having been achingly close to some huge projects as a producer, but never quite finding a perfect foil. He’d come home for noble reasons, to look after his unwell father, but it still felt like a kind of failure. 

“We were both in this weird place and just a bit on the low side,” says Bradley. 

Pilbrow reluctantly agreed to the meeting, held at a bland inner city cafe, but took care to manage expectations. “Look, I’m not going to promise anything,” he told the label. “I do weird shit. It’s probably not going to work.”

They liked each other though, and found a shared musical language, so agreed to give writing a try. When they met again a few days later, Pilbrow picked up a guitar and started playing some haunted chords. By the day’s end, they’d written and recorded a demo of ‘Call You Out’, which ultimately became the first single by Deryk (stylised as deryk, all lower case), the name Bradley now performs under.

What went into the WOMb EP (photo: Duncan Greive)

The song came out in response to a series of events in her personal life during the first half of last year. Her partner, who is Sāmoan, experienced a racist remark in his own home, the aftermath of which added to a powerlessness she felt in other areas of her life. The episode left Bradley frustrated and seething, replaying scenarios in her mind and imagining what she might have said had she been able to find the words.

“I clearly had a problem with telling people what I thought because I never would say anything… I just kept feeling gross about it.”

She was unable to stop fixating, until ‘Call You Out’ spilled out of her in that first writing session with Pilbrow. The song that emerged is a slow, sinister anthem, Bradley’s vocal a whispered threat over loping trip-hop percussion and a chorus that raises the stakes with each iteration. By the end it verges on industrial intensity, with harsh textures scouring across the initially pretty hook, exposing its inner brutality. 

Released today, it still has the scratchy looped guitar Pilbrow laid down that day, but has swollen to become what is likely to become Deryk’s signature song – her best shot at a breakout and that relatively rare single which feels like it captures some of this cultural moment. 

Those who have heard it see the potential for it to break out. Deryk signed to Universal New Zealand for the world, before a bidding war ensued for regional rights, and is now licensed to EMI/Virgin in the UK and Republic in the US. “Very rarely have I heard a debut song from an artist be so strong and gripping,” Ben Adelson, head of A&R at Republic, told The Spinoff. “She has such a level of maturity for such a young artist that it was no question we wanted to work with her.”

While this is the first time around for Bradley, Pilbrow’s been through the ringer of big dreams before, and knows to treat them warily. “I was really surprised that they were going to release it overseas without seeing how it does here first,” he allows. But his general air of circumspection prevails. “Don’t let me discourage you,” he tells Bradley, “but I’m still sceptical as fuck.”

The long shadow of Lorde

In 2020, while Pilbrow is still right to be sceptical, there are reasons to view New Zealand as a plausible location from which to launch a pop career. Two huge breakouts have come already this year: Jawsh 685 is a teenager currently at number one on the UK charts, while Benee’s ‘Supalonely’ has over 300m Spotify plays. Both are global hits pulled off with their authors effectively trapped at home, while the world grapples with the worst pandemic in a century. Each has also been massively helped by social media platform TikTok, a phenomenon which grips the contemporary music industry while causing its veterans to despair.

Photo: Madeline Bradley / Supplied

For all those artists’ success, it’s the shadow of Lorde which is unavoidable on the Deryk project. There are several uncanny parallels which, when stacked together, feel hard to ignore. Like Yelich-O’Connor, Bradley spent years on a development deal before signing to Universal New Zealand. She has been overseen by a contracting English A&R, Simon Banks, as Yelich-O’Connor was with Scott McLauchlan. Each arrived with a somewhat cultivated air of mystery. Lorde initially had only an illustration available as an image, while Deryk’s first photos are distorted stills from her somewhat extraordinary videos for ‘Call You Out’ and the as-yet-unreleased ‘One Star’, each shot in lockdown. Both artists debuted with a five song EP (Deryk’s is called WOMb) and a very strong lead single, both licensed to Republic for the US. 

The part which feels most on the nose is the fact Pilbrow was the producer who unlocked her sound. Like Joel Little, who produced Lorde’s Love Club EP and debut album Pure Heroine, Pilbrow is a veteran of New Zealand’s briefly exhilarating pop-punk scene in the mid-’00s – his Elemeno P toured with Little’s Goodnight Nurse. 

‘Royals’ is a song which changed pop music, dramatically slowing its pace and birthing hundreds of soundalikes, while clearing the lane for singular artists like Billie Eilish. Could ‘Call You Out’ do the same? Like ‘Royals’, it goes against the prevailing grain of Spotify-era pop, much of which sounds like the product of machine learning and big data, engineered and micro-targeted so as to let an infinite feed flow by without challenging its listener. For all that, pop music has always thrived on staying in motion.

Still, hits are rare, hits which re-angle pop music are much rarer still. At this specific and charged juncture in Deryk’s trajectory, it’s impossible to tell whether lines pointing to an earlier New Zealand success story are portentous or simply cute. But they are too numerous to ignore.

In the beginning

Bradley was born in the UK in 1996, and moved between the suburbs of London and other southern English cities. “I was always pretty away with the fairies as a child,” she says, attributing it to her ADHD diagnosis. Her relationship with music was cultivated in a distinctly unglamorous way – listening to free CDs given away with red top tabloid The Sun on long drives to the car ferry, so the family could shop at the giant and very cheap hypermarkets in Calais.

She had a discman, and fell in love with soul singers Johnny Nash and Bill Withers on UK motorways. But aside from some brief percussion lessons at the age of five, it was a one way relationship. They played, she listened. 

The family moved to her father Mark’s native New Zealand in 2004, when Bradley was eight. They landed at Taradale in Hawke’s Bay; her mother Deborah was a receptionist at a doctors’ surgery while her father worked as a builder. Music came soon enough. A friend she met at Napier Girls wrote short stories, and Bradley followed suit. 

“One day she just started playing something she’d written on an electric piano and I remember thinking ‘I could do that’,” says Bradley. “‘I could fully just put some of these stories to song, to a melody’.”

She followed the interest deeper. A colleague of her mother’s had a son who played guitar, and on Thursdays she would head to his house to write and play. It led to experiences typical to many studious-but-creative teens in New Zealand: Rockquest and Play it Strange and Young Shakespeare. She had a term-long exchange to Hiroshima, and spent time at The Globe in London. There’s a song credited to Madeline Bradley called ‘That Feeling’ on 2013’s Lion Foundation Songwriting Competition, Vol. 10. Few musically-inclined New Zealanders in this era can escape high school without digital echoes.

After leaving school she tried her hand at design at Massey University in Wellington, but after a year abandoned it to drive north, determined to pursue music. In 2015 she uploaded a Spooky Black cover to Soundcloud, then headed to Auckland to enrol in an electronic music production course, listening to Chelsea Jade’s ‘Night Swimmer’ on repeat on the way. Something about the song spoke to her – but it would be four years before she’d meet its producer in Pilbrow, and finally unlock the sounds in her mind.

The Spooky Black cover gathered over 100,000 listens, and got her invited to play a showcase at Backbeat Bar, a small and quite corny classic rock venue off Auckland’s K Rd. There she played well enough to attract the attention of Simon Banks, manager of KT Tunstall during her awards-laden ‘00s years, and now manager to Bradley. He had moved to New Zealand in 2015 and signed Bradley to a development deal, essentially agreeing to help her find her way in the hope it might lead to this moment. 

Photo: Madeline Bradley / Supplied

Then, for four years, a typical grinding slog at the fringes of the modern music industry, writing music and studying production, first at SAE and then at MAINZ. “My logic was that I would go there and learn all the jargon and understand how it works, so then when I went into an environment, I could talk about it properly and not feel like I was just getting pushed aside because of my gender,” she says. “Because that was real obvious that that was probably going to be the case.”

She worked first at Recycle Boutique, then a fitness nutrition store in Les Mills, living the kind of precarious life common to young musicians. “I had to be really careful about money… I could never take an Uber or anything like that.” 

She worked with visiting producers through Songhubs and flew to Sydney and Melbourne for intensive writing sessions. “Nothing fitted,” she says. “Everything felt so forced and false.” Like so many women before her, she felt restrained from expressing her vision, instead creating the kind of slick but insipid songs from nowhere which are so often the result of such fast collaboration. While she forged strong working relationships with artists like SJD and Buzz Moller, locating her own sound eluded her. 

As the years ticked by, doubt seeped in. Then she met Pilbrow at that fading cafe in central Auckland, and suddenly, things clicked. 

Searching for a song

When they met, Pilbrow was in a similar funk, back home from the US having grazed some very successful projects (Halsey, The Neighbourhood), but without having found an artist that really hewed to his vision. While in Elemeno P, he DJed in a pop trio called Sound of the Overground which prized the likes of Sugababes and Rihanna over the era’s critically acclaimed MIA and Klaxons. 

Since then, the trajectory of music itself puzzled him. The rise of streaming brought with it a smooth, borderless pop aesthetic which should have suited him, yet much of it sounded safe and sexless, lacking in the electric qualities which had always drawn him to the form. In his own work he started playing around with samples of tapes he got from op shops, muddying up strong melodies with distortion and noise.

He describes where his sound went as “a little bit experimental. There’s weird sounds, drones and all these wacky things. But the structures, the melodies, the chords are actually still the same.”

Living in the US, labels knew he had an original sound, and sometimes sought him out for it. Often when people got in a studio though, they wanted something more conventional. He was disillusioned with the industry and his place in it, over 40 and wondering where he was going when he returned to Auckland to care for his father. Then he met Bradley, and they found what they’d been missing in each other.

Four days until ‘Call You Out’

At lunchtime during the first bitterly cold streak this winter, I headed across the Auckland Harbour Bridge to Pilbrow’s home studio. Bradley sat on a daybed and idly sorted through a folder of imagery, Pilbrow sprawled on a swivel chair next to speakers, a monitor and a dinky little keyboard. Between the two sat a low table with some of Pilbrow’s op shop cassettes on it – Creatively Managing Pain, Sanctuary by Ana and Norval Williamson. Beyond that a table covered in mixing desks, keyboards, pedals and hard disks. Below that, more gear. Everywhere the detritus of musical life.

Some of Justyn Pilbrow’s recent discoveries (photo: Duncan Greive)

It was four days out from the release of ‘Call You Out’, but the pair seem relaxed. We talked for nearly two hours, with Bradley telling me her life story and traversing the road of disappointments that made connecting with Pilbrow such a breakthrough. They have an easy chemistry, each open and unprepossessing. Unlike most musicians, Bradley has no front. Small acts of kindness seem to floor her, as when she found herself unable to write due to the stress of a long-expired warrant and rego, before Pilbrow drove her up to the shops and paid for them.

“No one’s ever treated me like that before,” she says, sounding almost awed, her accent caught between her country of birth and the one she’s lived most of her life in.

For all the romanticised cliches about the construction of music, this here – two relative strangers, figuring it out between the analogue and digital – is how it’s mostly conducted now. Bands of friends sweating it out on stages, growing into something more, that was fading long before Covid-19. Pilbrow and Bradley’s version is exchanging muffled sound files they record onto their cassette dictaphones. At one point she plays me a recording of the automated Covid-19 announcement which played at the airport when she flew home to see family recently, one she’s considering placing into a future song.

The weather breaks. Bradley and I walk down towards the choppy grey sea nearby, a regular trek she made during the WOMb EP’s recording between May of last year and January of this one. Recently, sitting by the water, a sparrow flew down and perched on her hand. It called to mind her maternal grandfather, Derrick Baddeley, who had a bird tattooed on his arm. She was very close to him growing up – he was an accomplished accordionist, which seemed magical to her, and was devastated when he passed, not long after she moved to New Zealand. Deryk, the name she records under, is a tribute to him.

We walk back up to a simple weatherboard house alongside a church on an unremarkable street on the North Shore. For the past year it’s had strange, scratchy but sharply melodic music seeping out. Today that music ventures out into the world for the first time. The odds remain stacked against it, but the pandemic flattens all plans, and means releasing from Northcote is essentially the same as from New York.

Deryk is stuck here for now. Whether her songs can travel will be revealed in time.