A very well produced and somewhat cheeky commercial for the Renault Clio IV has been banned by UK authorities because it objectifies women.
In the ad, produced by Renault UK and released to YouTube, the scenario sees customers taking a Clio for a test drive. When stopped at an intersection the salesman suggests the customer presses the va va voom button at which point a mini Paris is built around them.
Included in the mock Paris setting are scantily clad dancers. There’s a version with female and male dancers. It’s true in the full version with the burlesque dancers that there’s some slow motions scenes that increase the revs a bit, but all in all it’s all pretty tame.
However, the YouTube clip, which had registered over 3 million views, got at least one viewer hot enough under the collar to complain and in response the British Advertising Standards Authority said, in part:
The ASA noted that Renault felt the female dancers were just one of the iconic Parisian scenes featured in the ad, which was intended to be a light-hearted parody… However, we were concerned that the ad featured a number of shots of the women’s breasts and bottoms, in which their heads were obscured, and which we considered invited viewers to view the women as sexual objects.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 4.1 (Harm and offence).
However, we’re not wowsers here at AUSmotive and you can see the original ad in full after the break.