ASA probes ‘call centre chickens’ ad after outcry

An advertising campaign for insurance company Swiftcover.com, which depicts call centre staff as “chickens”, has caused anger amongst telephone workers.

So far the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received 25 complaints. The ad features a woman trying to obtain insurance cover by ringing call centres staffed by poultry.

Many of the complaints have come from call centre staff who say that the ad is insulting and denigrates them, because it implies that they do not have freedom of expression in their jobs and are forced to work in cramped conditions.

The ASA has banned a Tesco ad, created by Lowe London, promoting a personalised diet plan.

The watchdog says that the ad encouraged people to sign up for the plan but did not make it clear that they had to pay £2.99 a week for the service.

vComplaints about an ad for Smint mints, showing a mint being dispensed into a boy’s mouth, have been rejected by the ASA.

There was a complaint that the ad could encourage children to copy the action and risk choking.

The ASA says that the ad is unlikely to lead to copycat behaviour and that a Smint is too small to choke a child.