ASA sides with Change4Life over controversial game ads

The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that Change4Life’s stereotypical and stupid ad campaign can stay. Despite infuriating the British game industry with its implication that videogames are part of the “doing nothing” that leads to premature death, the ASA sees no reason to step in.

“Whilst the ASA Council understood the concerns of Tiga and those complainants who worked in the video games industry, it noted that the ad did not claim that playing computer or console games alone would lead to illness or premature death,” stated the ASA. 

While I don’t think the poster was all that offensive (just, as I say, stereotypical and stupid), I find it quite rich that the ASA will pull videogame adverts that generate about twelve complaints from idiots, yet won’t step in when an entire industry is pissed off. It’s not that I think Change4Life should be forced to stop. I simply think the ASA is being rather inconsistent in its ruling. 

What confuses me is that the ASA will ban a poster for Burnout simply for implying violent behavior, yet it won’t pull these adverts because implication is not enough. I’m just sick of double standards. After all, imagine the furor there would be if the kid in the poster was reading a book. Book reading is even more passive than game playing, but Change4Life would never dare portray books in such a light. If it won’t have a kid reading a book, let’s not pretend the campaign didn’t know what it was doing when it put a game controller in the boy’s hand. 

Hypocrisy. Change4Life has it.