ASA bans ads by Adidas for objectionable nudity

A series of ads by Adidas has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, the self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry in the United Kingdom, for their explicit nudity.
A campaign called ‘Support is Everything’ has been launched by Adidas, in order to advertise its comprehensive range of sports bras, highlighting the fact that bras cannot be one size fits all. Adidas tweeted an image showing in a grid the bare breasts of 20 women, informing about the fact that their new sports bra range has 43 styles for different types of women, where everyone can look for their right fit. As part of the campaign, two posters were published, one portraying the breasts of 62 women with the tagline ‘The reason we did not make just one new sports bra’ and the other showing the 64 images of women.
The campaign, at first released in February, received 24 complaints. According to the complainants, the images shared by Adidas were inappropriate as children will be exposed to them, while others shared that the campaign was diminishing the existence of women to a single body part and objectifying them. To this, Adidas replied by saying that the images were a representation of inclusivity and that the campaign was not objectifying women, as their faces have been cropped in the images.
Twitter has not removed the tweet by Adidas saying that it was a non-paid tweet and organic one, not breaching its terms of service. According to ASA, though the aim of the campaign was to promote the sports bras by giving an honest representation of women’s breasts, the focus was more on the breasts and less on the bras. It noted that the ads were not targeted in the correct manner, causing extensive offence and should not appear again.

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