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Britain's Banned Christmas Advert

CFC

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This has kicked up quite a stink in the UK.

Basically, Iceland, one of Britain's smaller supermarket chains, selling mostly frozen foods, attempted to run a Christmas campaign this year that drew attention to the plight of the planet's rainforests and rainforest animals as a result of the destruction of said forests for the growth of Palm oil plantations. Iceland does not use Palm oil in its products, you see, but almost every other food retailer does.

To provide some perspective: in another example of unintended consequences, the campaign to eliminate toxic trans-fatty acids from fast foods and junk food around the turn of the century resulted in large multinational food corporations like Nestle, Kraft/Mondelez, Kelloggs, Mars, Danone and Unilver replacing them with Palm oil.

The wonder of Palm oil is that it doesn't oxidise easily, and makes an ideal replacement for trans-fatty acids, which means junk food can be kept for longer in their nasty disposable plastic packaging, thus boosting profit margins, but without harming health as badly as TFAs did (apart from, like, obesity, diabetes, inflammation and death from poor health). Butter could, of course, be used instead of either, but that would harm said profit margins even further.

Anyway, in the UK we have a culture of Christmas advertising that doesn't necessarily relate directly to the retailer. It's all about emotional connection, or some such marketing nonsense, and creates a huge brand salience. The John Lewis partnership generally 'wins' this advertising contest, and such ads are estimated to add as much as 25-30% to Christmas sales, though occasionally others have taken the annual Christmas advert crown like Sainsbury's with their Mog's Christmas Calamity advert.

So this year Iceland attempted to run an 'emotional' campaign of its own, devoid of both its own brand and that of Greenpeace, who ultimately provided the cartoon they used for their campaign. Unfortunately, and despite removing the Greenpeace logo and even their own, the semi-privatised British industry body now responsible for TV advertising standards decided that Iceland's ad "breeched" rules on political advertising.

Well, this judgement went down like a lead-balloon, which is rather unsurprising given the fact that the advert literally does not contain Greenpeace's logo, and so should in theory, therefore, have avoided being censored.

This is the terrible, politically outrageous, dangerous and censored advert they wanted to run:




And here's some discussion on it:


Iceland Christmas advert banned for being too political

Body that rejected Iceland Christmas ad 'faced storm of abuse'

Iceland Christmas ad: Petition to show it on TV hits 670k

Iceland Christmas advert 'ban' a 'misunderstanding', says advisory body


*******

Suffice it to say: Iceland have proven themselves to be quite the marketing geniuses in getting their advert banned. It's given them vastly more coverage than they could ever have hoped for, while at the same time letting everyone know they don't sell products that require an environmental catastrophe to bring to market.

Perhaps they paid someone to ban it after all? ;)
 
Thanks for posting CFC :)

I saw this elsewhere- the ad actually really resonated with me; I'm an emotional wreck these days and I am not ashamed to admit that this gets me teared up a bit. Maybe a touch ashamed actually :p.

I don't see it as political, per se, but the issue itself of course has political facets. Perhaps the association of 'environmentalism' with left-wing politics has influenced the decision, but it seems really fucking suspect to me, it actually reeks of political bias itself. That said, I do find these sort of heart-wrenching ad campaigns that are intended to do exactly what I described above, and all in the name of capitalism, to be superficial, calculated and totally disingenuous. I wonder if Iceland use petrol, by any chance?
 
^ no worries oh chill one. emotions like anything else need a good reset. emotions are the longest to reset, the body is fastest, mind and soul right in the middle. your only human. (psst, that video made me want to tear down a few homes and grocery stores) plus let's not forget, we've done a shitload of damage to this earth and other residents on it, anything more than what we've done already is beyond reproach and disgusting. even the stoniest of us are affected by it to some degree or another in today's world. good to read some swilow posts again.

@CFC: i think you and JessFR might be on to something here. if that's too political by doing one good deed during this time of year that doesn't involve trampling your fellow man the night after thanksgiving or getting stressed out from stretching your plastic limits to ensure gifts are more important than time together; then the letter A will soon be copyrighted and the air we breathe will be taxed.
 
IMO that ad isn't even political, it's simply appealing to what should be common decency. Unfortunately the left seems to be the only side that cares enough about our destroying the environment to make it a priority, so people think environmental protection is a partisan issue, when in fact it's an issue that we should all care very much about since it affects us all and all future generations (especially).
 
I find it pretty interesting that Iceland (FTR the home of British frozen processed food) are the only shop I've ever known to have a handwritten weight watchers billboard at the front of the shop.
 
Ah the great "misunderstanding". Code for "you were right, and the idiot responsible has been fired"

Yep yep, problem solved! Sorry folks, it'll never happen again =D

Thanks for posting CFC :)

I'm an emotional wreck these days and I am not ashamed to admit that this gets me teared up a bit.

I don't see it as political, per se, but the issue itself of course has political facets. Perhaps the association of 'environmentalism' with left-wing politics has influenced the decision, but it seems really fucking suspect to me, it actually reeks of political bias itself. That said, I do find these sort of heart-wrenching ad campaigns that are intended to do exactly what I described above, and all in the name of capitalism, to be superficial, calculated and totally disingenuous. I wonder if Iceland use petrol, by any chance?

Embrace your emotions! It is a sad story, as it's intended to be :) Though clearly you saw through that and realise they're not a great deal better in many ways. Though they are doing away with disposable plastic packaging too, which puts them still further ahead of the pack.

@CFC: i think you and JessFR might be on to something here. if that's too political by doing one good deed during this time of year that doesn't involve trampling your fellow man the night after thanksgiving or getting stressed out from stretching your plastic limits to ensure gifts are more important than time together; then the letter A will soon be copyrighted and the air we breathe will be taxed.

You are right my friend! It's Christmas after all, the one time of the year when we're all encouraged to at least pretend to try and think of things bigger than ourselves and our own little lives <3

IMO that ad isn't even political, it's simply appealing to what should be common decency. Unfortunately the left seems to be the only side that cares enough about our destroying the environment to make it a priority, so people think environmental protection is a partisan issue, when in fact it's an issue that we should all care very much about since it affects us all and all future generations (especially).

Strangely, environmentalism is much less partisan here in the UK than it would seem to be in the US or Australia (for example). The right, and Thatcher in particular, made much more of an effort than our socialist party in the 1980s and 90s.

Cynics might say that was because heavy industry (the big polluters back then) were all Labour supporting, and tough regulations helped to destroy industry and eliminate the socialist threat.

But I like to think there was more to it than that. Even now, in these post-post-modern times, a significant strand of conservative thought backs strong environmental protections, at least in the UK.


wow, thats a really offensive way to talk about such a beautiful country

It's true though. Iceland is like nature's own freezer, with pretty sites and vistas instead of shelves ;)

I find it pretty interesting that Iceland (FTR the home of British frozen processed food) are the only shop I've ever known to have a handwritten weight watchers billboard at the front of the shop.

Writing by hand has been proven to increase calorie burning by up to 75%!!
 
I actually love this ad! It's so touching thank you for sharing it. I don't find it political at all, just honest. We can have products that are responsibly made, for a good price.
 
^ here in america we confuse iceland with greenland so we remember it by practical ways. greenland is covered more in ice and iceland is covered more in green (details permitting).

the practical snafu of shopping at iceland without actually seeing with our own eyes is misleading to us and our Mcdonald swilling ways.
 
That advert isn't even political. It makes absolutely zero mention of ANY politicunt party. Rather, it (very touchingly too, IMO), I'd take that ad over that soppy, flaccid, wet-behind-the-ears 'kevin the carrot' bollocks any day. It draws attention to an important issue, and one of worldwide, global importance (well maybe not to antarctica, but everywhere else [and thats only because there's nobody THERE in that particular frozen hell]. So by definition, a worldwide issue surely cannot be political. Politics is all about sects and septs and in/outgroups, all conniving and conspiring to stab their rivals in the back to get another corpse to stand on to help prop them up as they claw and slime their way up the greasy pole.

And where you have politics, you have scum. That ad wasn't the product of slimy, toadying, poisonous backstabbing filth, we really do need to do what we can in the name of conservation. There will come a day when there ARE no more orangutans to save. Hell just look at the recent discovery of a new species of orangutan, they are already endangered. A saddening, and abhorrent, disgusting indictment of man's behaviour towards the animals, plant life and mycobiota which given his intellectual capacity, he has more power over more life forms than any other living species on this planet, and ergo, is in a position whereby he owes it to nature to exercise responsible stewardship over. not to pollute the seas with plastic nano-trash that rather than decaying, just gets pounded. battered and pulverized into smaller and smaller fragments, which end up SO small, they end up in filter-feeding animals, and even in mosquito larvae, which become mosquitos, which then end up passing plastic nano-particulate wastes into the animals they bite, etc. etc.

It's working it's way back up the food chain if you ask me.

And sooner or later, we are going to find ourselves crying and lamenting 'oh, WHY didn't we DO something sooner! WHY did we let this happen! when we find our neonatal offspring full of tesco carrier bags, disposable forks and bits of broken dildo' when it turns out that these ultra-fine plastic particles of high environmental mobility are in some way harmful once they enter the intracellular cytoplasmic space and organelles.

And which (the plastic wastes) will take CENTURIES to actually decompose.

Given our place in evolutionary terms, and our capacity in comparison to that of animal life, it HAS to be us who acts, it can be no other. WE made the mess and we are the only ones who can make a concerted effort to clean it up. And the ones who OUGHT to do it too.
 
@Limpet_Chicken: very strong, thorough and vivid message in there. i get where your coming from.

ugly thing this politics, business and holiday dance thing is.

let's enjoy trampling one another shopping, wake up to open some gifts, get all funny in the head (pissed, buzzed, or trippin) and then go to sleep and do something to make next year better. sound good? sound good!
 
I have to confess, I've already had it up there from arsehole to eyeteeth with the likes of black friday, black five days, black weekend and cyber-cunting-well-monthefuckday.

Its all just marketing swine vomiting up capitalist bilge owing jack shit to any form of tradition or reason, just invented so they can goad gullible, greedy little shits until they are frothing and foaming at the mouth, twatting each other for the 'privilege' of being aggressively advertised at.

Makes me want to round up a bunch of advertisers and marketeers and their filthy little middlemen, grab a chair and see how many rectal sphincters I can shove it up, diagonally, until the chair starts to cry.

Because there really is nothing to justify it, it's just shallow, empty, soulless advertising, to feed fat cats and middle-men, like they are trying to squeeze several extra artificial christmases out of every year. At least xmas has a past, and a tradition, I'm not religious myself, but it isn't some culture-less empty headed watered down piss like all these 'black XYZ' 'cyber monday' and any other such similar shite that I'm just fortunate enough not to have heard of yet.

And as for the wankers responsible for the thread's title act of filthy, unforgivable censorship...do not even get me started. I do not like censorship, and I have precious little tolerance for censors. Trying to shut up a message like the fact we need to do what we can, WHILE we still have the chance, to ensure the survival of these great apes, these censorious pricks are an accursed, noxious cancer, fungating and festering on the diseased ball sack of the foulest, most base and self-serving spunk-stain on the dirty underwear of society. We would be better off with them rounded up and burnt.
 
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