Advertising Updates – ALAC’s Lisa advert and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty

Artandmylife has asked in comments if I’ve had any response yet from ALAC or the Advertising Standards’ Authority, in regard to my May 2nd complaint about the Lisa advert and its appalling victim blaming. The answer as at the time of writing this is:

• One email from ALAC acknowledging receipt and that my complaint would be forwarded to the appropriate person. I emailed back thanking them for the acknowledgement. No further response from ALAC.


• One email from the ASA acknowledging receipt. I emailed back thanking them for the acknowledgement. No further response from the ASA.


• My comment on the ALAC blog post about the whole advertising campaign is now out of moderation, after a bit of a wait. Joanna has a comment up there too, and big ups to her for steering me to this in the first place. ALAC has responded to the comments from both of us, in the blog thread, including the following:

The message in all three of our advertisements is that binge drinking increases the risks of harm to yourself or harm to others. The advertisements however are not about blame. We have conducted a lot of focus group testing (including with young women who drink) to ensure that the take out message from these adverts is about increased risks from binge drinking. At ALAC we are very clear that while binge drinking does increase your risk of harm, this does not mean that if you are a victim of a crime while drunk that you are to blame. This point did test positively with our target audiences, that the advertisement was about highlighting real risks from drinking and not about apportioning blame.

The ALAC blog response also says they have received two complaints about the Lisa ad, in addition to "your phone call". I didn't call them so maybe they mean Joanna? and neither did Joanna, so in fact that means at least three complaints (edited Wed pm as a result of Joanna's comment below). They mention that there have been quite a number of complaints made about the ad to the ASA, and that it will be considered at the ASA's May meeting, presumably with ALAC putting a case similar to what's in their blog comment. The whole tenor of that response is "we don't see any blaming, therefore it is not possible for the ad to be doing any blaming." Assumedly any official reply that I receive from ALAC will be along these lines, but hope burns eternal.

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On the issue of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which I mentioned a few days ago in relation to their fundraising for EDEN, it turns out that even those real women shots they are using in their advertising campaigns are airbrushed. Shame, shame, shame. Update: Please check out the links from twelve-plus-one about this in comments, it is possible that the New Yorker quote oversells the story and that it was only minor colour correcting not full airbrushing. Time will tell, hopefully.