NATIONAL: The national advertising complaints board has dimissed the latest swipe at a Cotton On marketing campaign.
The Advertising Standards Bureau has revealed it received a number of complaints about a poster used by Cotton On during its June/July sale period to promote its underwear product. The poster featured a young woman wearing underpants and nothing on her upper body. The woman's bottom was "a very prominent feature" of the advertisement, the Bureau said.
Complaints submitted to the Bureau focussed on the poster's sexual nature.
The Bureau conducted a review of the material and has ruled that it did not breach the Advertiser Code of Ethics, noting in its report "that although some members of the community may consider the representation of the woman in the poster to constitute objectification, that she was not portrayed in an overly sexualised manner and the featuring of the woman wearing briefs was relevant to the product being advertised".
Complaints submitted to the Bureau had included "It is really soft porn" and "It encourages males to consider girls/women as sexual objects".
The complaints are the latest saga to hit the fast fashion retailer. Earlier in the year Cotton On came under fire for a number of t-shirts in its children's range which bore slogans such as "I'm a tits man", "They shake me" and "I'm living proof my mum is easy". The retailer later withdrew the product from sale.