Complaints about Ultra Tune ads are dismissed by the Advertising Standards Bureau

Ultra Tune are pleased to hear that all the complaints regarding our recent adverts in the ‘Unexpected Situations’ series have been dismissed by the Advertising Standards Bureau.

In summary of complaints made about our 5th advert ‘Muffler’ the board stated ‘In our respectful submission, the advertisement does not show any form of discrimination,
vilification, humiliation, contempt or ridicule against women.‘

They go on to state:

We submit that there is no basis for the Board to determine that the Muffler advertisement
vilifies, humiliates, or ridicules women nor can it be found that women are portrayed in a
negative stereotype, unintelligent or helpless or unaware of their surroundings.
At all times, the female actors are in full control of the vehicle.
The advertisement clearly show that the actors becoming consciously aware of the fire with
the vehicle and react immediately.

Upon seeing the fire at the back of the vehicle, they immediately and positively act to resolve
the unexpected situation; namely call for help using the Ultra Roadside app on their mobile
phone, grab fire extinguishers, exit the vehicle and attempt to put the fire out with the
aforesaid extinguishers. These are actions that would occur regarding of gender and are
contrary to the complaint of them being unintelligent or helpless.

Furthermore, they then make the conscious decision to flee from the burning vehicle when
they realise they could or did not put the fire out. The same reaction a reasonable person
would have regardless of gender.

The oil falling on splashing them near the end of the advertisement is a further unexpected
situation from the vehicle explosion (and a hyper-realistic comedic situation).
It is not a depiction of females being helpless.
Their demeanour at the end is designed not to be of helpless but relief from the incident and
that help has arisen.

The use of a male driver is not intended to be a statement or comment on gender roles. This
character is an employee of the company and is a continuation from our previous unexpected
situation advertisements. We also point out that opportunity to assist with either
extinguishing the fire or otherwise preventing the vehicle exploding had passed by the time
the Roadside Assistance driver arrived.

At all times, the female actors were in summer street clothing. The advertisement did not
focus on their clothing but on them reacting to the unexpected situation. We deal with the
single close frame of the female actors’ bottoms below.

Furthermore, the fact that the vehicle catches on fire and explodes cannot form a depiction of
women as unintelligent or unable to recognise a dangerous situation. The irony is that, in any
iteration of this hyper-realistic situation, the unreasonable inference could be that the
specific class of persons (i.e. of whatever gender, sexual orientation, race, etc.) is somehow
being portrayed as (per case 0175/16) “ridiculous…and…incites ridicule toward their
behaviour”. Any common-sense viewing of this advertisement is that the vehicle caught on
fire – the fact the actors are female bears no consequence for the overall message of the
advertisement.

Clearly, there is no act in this advertisement that is intended to either excite contemptuous
laughter (i.e. laugh at rather than with the characters), or urge on, stimulate or prompt to
action hatred contempt or ridicule for women. Any such finding could naturally be the result
of an agenda driven biased view, however this should not be said to be the view of the
reasonable general public.

To read more on this please see the ASB case notes:

https://adstandards.com.au/cases?ref=0042/17

https://adstandards.com.au/cases?ref=0043/17

https://adstandards.com.au/cases?ref=0044/17

https://adstandards.com.au/cases?ref=0045/17