Monday, July 13, 2009
Used car sales - it's a bonkers job
"If you don't go to Bognor Motors, you must be mental".
This is the end strapline of a radio ad that saw a used car company in West Sussex get into trouble with the Advertising Standards Agency recently, because it breached "good taste and decency".
It only took one complaint from mental health charity The Capital Project Trust to get the ad taken off the air. They felt it might be offensive to people suffering with mental health problems and the ASA agreed.
We think the people that complained must be… (insert your own mildly offensive insult here). We came up with a few, but would not dare to repeat them.
In a comment on the piece in MediaWeek the commenter suggested that Bognor Motors should be very grateful to the charity that complained as they couldn't have bought publicity like that. He also suggested further ‘types' that Bognor Motors may decide might not go to the car dealership, such as ‘tall' or ‘smelly' people, so that more people would have a pop and get further ads banned.
Ah yes, the game of being controversial – clever and calculated, or with the possibility of backfiring horribly?
So, what next for the car dealership marketing magicians?
Let us have your slogans and remember - we do not endorse Bognor Motors, but we are sure this isn't doing their customer figures any harm. We hear there aren't many mental people in Bognor anyway.
[Image © vagawi vie Flicr, under Creative Commons Licence]
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