Watchdog bans ‘sexist’ shoe ads
AVALLEY shoe firm has been forced to withdraw a ‘degrading’ advertising campaign featuring semi-naked women with the slogan ‘fancy a pair’ after a watchdog ruled it was sexist and ‘offensive’.
Stacksteads company Goodwin Smith Shoes had released a series of online adverts in August, showing topless women covering their ‘breasts with shoes’, a woman in her underwear on all fours, and a topless woman serving a fullyclothed man a drink.
Responding to nine complaints, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the firm, which is based out of Atherton Holme Mill, off Railway Street, had breached rules regarding social responsibility, harm and offence, and the adverts were ‘degrading to women’.
The ASA said that during a Youtube video advert produced by the company, a woman wearing black underwear was pictured ‘on her knees’ in front of a fully clothed man who was holding a plastic machine which released paper money notes in ‘quick succession at her face’.
The authority added that an email from the firm included the claim ‘Fancy a pair?’ and was accompanied by an image of three women wearing just knickers, with one woman’s breasts exposed, the second covering her chest with her arm with her nipple exposed and the third posing in front of the others holding a pair of shoes over her chest. Above the image was the company tag line ‘Bucking good shoes’.
In their response, Goodwin Smith said that their campaign had attempted to portray a ‘fantasy concept’ in which the men were portrayed as being ‘confident’, but that they were ‘not meant to degrade women’. They added that content containing nudity was marked up as ‘explicit content’.
But the ASA upheld the complaints, which had challenged whether the ads were offensive because they were sexist, objectifying women, and degrading to women, and banned them from appearing again. A spokesperson for the authority said: “We considered that topless and lingerie-clad women were irrelevant to the shoes being advertised and that the general tone of the ads was also both sexually suggestive and degrading to women.
“We did not think that the warnings provided were sufficient to counter the likely offence caused by the scenes in the ad.
“Because the ads were sexist, degrading to women, and objectifying women, we considered that they were likely to cause serious and widespread offence, including to Goodwin Smith’s potential customer base. We concluded they were therefore in breach of the Code.
“The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Goodwin Smith to ensure that in the future their ads were socially responsible and that they did not objectify women.”