A 30-second video advertisement created and distributed by R.M.Williams has been forcibly discontinued following an Australian Ad Standards review.
The video depicts various scenes of a group of people enjoying time together. Examples include playing on the beach, playing with a dog, and posing with paper crowns, as well as brief scenes where they are riding a quad bike without wearing any safety gear or helmets.
The ad was distributed across BVOD, SVOD, traditional TV, and paid and organic social media.
A complaint was made on the grounds that quad bike accidents are the leading cause of death on Australian farms, with the complainant pointing to the lack of safety gear as an issue. This sparked an Ad Standards Community Panel review.
R.M.Williams initially responded to the complaint, claiming the quad bike imagery in the ad is used as a “contextual storytelling element, consistent with realistic rural life, rather than as the subject of the advertisement.”
“The focus of the creative remains on apparel, people, and setting,” R.M.Williams wrote.
“The advertisement is targeted to an adult audience and appears in premium broadcast and digital environments where viewers would reasonably understand the imagery as lifestyle representation rather than behavioural instruction. A reasonable member of the community would be unlikely to interpret the advertisement as encouraging unsafe conduct.”
The bootmaker brand added that it recognises the importance of health and safety considerations, including sensitivities around quad bike use in Australia.
In its review, the Community Panel considered that quad bike accidents and injuries are of significant concern to the Australian community. Since 2011, there have been 238 fatalities from quad bike accidents in Australia, according to Safe Work Australia.
While the panel acknowledged that the intention of the ad may not have been to influence community behaviour, it added that the scenes depicted showed that neither the driver nor his two passengers were wearing helmets.
“The panel also noted that the passengers do not appear to be holding onto anything to support their stability,” the Ad Standards case report read. “In the context of vehicle safety, and with the knowledge that quad bikes are notoriously easy to roll over, leading to accidents, injuries or fatalities, the panel considered that these scenes were in direct conflict with community standards on health and safety.
“The panel considered that this was problematic regardless of whether the setting was on a rural property, a farm, or in a city environment.”
Finding that the advertisement breached section 2.6 of the AANA Code of Ethics, R.M.Williams took down the advertisement across all channels.