Geeklawyer has had the misfortune to fly Ruinair and it is a miserable painful experience eavened only by the realisation that sweet death is only a few short decades away. Not short enough alas.
Equally the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has become the poster child (rivaled only by the BBFC) for all the cretinous, incompetent and self serving quangos that act as substitute for proper civil governance in this farcical metacognitive dissonant clusterfuck that we refer to as ‘regulation’.
Geeklawyer has said so much before and will presumably say so many times in the future.
Weird, then, that he should have to choose between Ruinair and the ASA. It is as though a slightly retarded God was engaged in a pathetic viva voce with Geeklawyer to prove that the Creator of Everything was superior. Jeez God, get over yourself.
Oh yea, the point. Right. This picture was used to advertise cheap flights:
Geeklawyer won’t pretend that his cock didn’t momentarily eclipse the London dildo. Really, he is heterosexual and he does have a pulse.
Following the complaints of 13 dweebs the puritan plebians at the ASA chose to regarded the advert as likely to cause offence, suggesting as it did that teenagers might have sex. This is of course a monstrous slur on our chaste virginal youth.
As for Ruinair:
Peter Sherrard, declared: “The ASA becomes more Monty Pythonesque by the day. It is remarkable that a picture of a fully-clothed model is now claimed to cause ’serious or widespread offence’, when many of the UK’s leading daily newspapers regularly run pictures of topless or partially-dressed females without causing any serious or widespread offence.
“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 insited Ryanair would “not be withdrawing this ad” and would “not provide the ASA with any of the undertakings they seek”.
Honestly. That meteor that’s going to pass near the moon - can Geeklawyer divert it to hit the ASA’s Central London offices dya think? Does anyone have Bruce Willis’ mobile?
This is what is known in the advertising trade as a ‘lets do it as quickly as we can and go down the pub’. Personally I would have slammed them for not going far enough with the headline. Why not, “When it comes to whoring sluts,no-one beats Ryanair” Or the more elegant, “Sure we’re cheap and nasty but since when was that a bad thing?”
Could this spell the end of the back to school night?
Ryan air should have stuck to acceptable advertising practices such as portraying Blair as Hitler.
never up for banning anything in general, but we do have to start waking up to the fact that the bland assumption the way to sell things is to stick pictures of nubile females all over them clothed or otherwise is infantile and an insult to anyone intelligent enough to get to an airport without bumping into it.
and the justification: well there are them topless birds in the sun innit? (i paraphrase a tad) blimey - what did he do for the rest of his working day? or to put things in a way he might understand ‘fuck off, open your eyes and look at the world, you dick’.
right, must see if there are any things i can buy with women on them. gotta love that crapitalism!
Advertising is basically a pile of shit that has taken over our airwaves and public spaces extolling rampant consumerism solutions to problems we never knew we had.
What makes me laugh is that some of it is deemed ok and some of it is banned, really rather arbitary when it’s all a pile of shit.
sadly, it’s a pile of shite that both reflects and intensifies the shite that abounds in society generally. as part of the vicious circle, i’d want to do something about it. but as you say, banning bits of it at random isn’t it.
It’s Ruinair. They’re not exactly going after an intelligent market. Intelligent people would realise that going by train is better, or that if that’s not practical, then any of the Proper Airlines that fly similar routes to Ruinair are also better. Both for an insignificant amount more money.
David, my guess is that their target market is “anyone who wants to fly cheaply” since their demographics and psychographics are all over the place. I don’t get the interest in Ruinair - I won’t use it (of course I have sugar daddies who fly me..). It’s not cheap by any means and it keeps adding charges. But worst of all it encourages the kind of anxious, annoying people to fly.
Ah, things were different in the old days, weren’t they?
http://www.miscuse.dk/womeninuniform/airline/stews2.jpg
http://www.miscuse.dk/womeninuniform/airline/dbca4014.jpg
http://www.miscuse.dk/womeninuniform/airline/1316419b.jpg
The 1970’s ‘Catch our smile’ may be a bit more direct, but it is more genteel than the 2000’s implied strap line, which is more likely to be of the ‘Catch our Clap’ variety
Thanks to the Evil Sister for the pointer here.
Oooh thanks Ho Hum, what triffic pics
Love a bit of 60’s/70’s me.
Yes cunning advertisers have been playing on men’s sexual desires for a long time now
And it has never worked.
My Dear GL,
Your ambitions with respect to the proportions of the more sensitive parts of your anatomy when aroused by a member of the opposite sex in relation to the Gherkin are, I think, somewhat disappointing; I was of the opinion that your allusion was about to direct the mind of the reader more toward Canary Wharf Tower than to that which passes itself off, by comparison, as a Modest and Slightly Unusual Looking Bump in the middle of the City……
I was intending to make such a comparison but then I thought “hmmm, my beloved readers will think me egotistical. No-one, as Mrs Robinson is wont to observe, likes an egomaniac”.
…except the egomaniac of course…