Horror show condemns Giffgaff ad

Giffgaff, the SIM-only pay-as-you-go operator, has been battered by the ad watchdog for the second time in three months after it ruled that a Halloween-inspired spot – featuring a chainsaw-wielding madman – could frighten the life out of kids.
The YouTube ad, devised by Fallon, opened with sounds of a woman screaming for help. She was running along a road at night being pursued by a man who appeared to be holding a chainsaw.
As the ad developed, a stream of screaming characters was introduced, each being pursued by the last, including the initial woman and man, a clown, a zombie, a pumpkin head, a doll holding a blow torch, a ghost and a man with an upside down head.
The collective of characters was then seen as a mock choir, “singing” outside a house. On-screen text stated “When you’re scared, you’re not the boss. At Giffgaff we’re all the boss. Giffgaff the mobile network run by you …”.
The Advertising Standards Association (ASA) received a complaint from one from a YouTube user whose child had seen the ad before a programme for young viewers.
In response, the Telefónica-owned company said it had targeted the ad only at YouTube viewers whose accounts recorded them as being over 18 and had previously searched for content using words like ‘horror’ or ‘Halloween’.
The company said it did not think the ad was likely to cause harm to adults and could be skipped after five seconds.
But the ASA was not convinced. In its ruling it said: “While the account holder was over 18, the content of the programme in which the ad was seen was unlikely to be of interest to them and any over 18s watching were likely to be doing so in order to accompany young children.
“In view of the content of the programme material being watched at the time, it was reasonable for consumers to expect that only advertising material that was suitable for a young audience would be shown.
“While we recognised Giffgaff’s efforts to target the ad to over 18s, and understood that they had used YouTube’s targeting filters to their full extent, we considered that, ultimately, it had not been targeted appropriately and was therefore in breach of the CAP Code.”
This is the second execution of the “we’re all the boss” campaign to rile the watchdog. In November, Giffgaff was blasted over a Twitter push that was linked to a sexually graphic video showing a young man coming home from a jog, only to stumble upon his parents hard at it in the laundry room.

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