Father fails in bid to have advert that upsets three-year-old daughter taken off TV

A concerned father has failed in a bid to have a Clientele Life Insurance TV advert that causes his three-year-old daughter to “cry frantically” taken off the air.

The father  complained to the advertising regulatory board that the animated advert offended his child. He asked the board to investigate and “put a stop to the advert on the basis that it could cause emotional trauma to children”.

The advert comprises “blob-like characters” that are “involved in various situations that could land them in hospital”. The situations include a “person getting an injury from a vuvuzela, a person having a heart attack after a lion jumps from behind a bush, someone being mugged, another falling while taking a selfie” and “someone coughing out their lungs”. It also features “a man catching fire at a braai, a lady being stung by a bee” and a “man falling off a ladder while installing a satellite dish”.

“Throughout the characters maintain smiling faces and sing songs. The advertisement features an upbeat tune with the words, ‘it’s easy to end up here [in hospital]'. Meanwhile, information about the Clientele Health Event Life Plan is displayed on the screen.” Clientele defended the advert and asked the board to dismiss the complaint. The board dismissed the complaint in September.

“For all these reasons, the directorate expressed some discomfort with the commercial being shown to children,” the board told the father — who is not being named in the article to protect the identity of his child.

“However, it also considered that many children’s cartoons do depict bumps on heads or broken limbs. In addition, the depiction in the commercial at hand is particularly benign — there is no blood depicted, and many of the images tend to be hyperbolic — such as the lungs actually coming out, and the vuvuzela getting stuck in the character’s mouth.

“The characters also appear to be successfully treated in hospital, so the outcome is a ‘happy’ one. While the directorate was not unanimous in this regard, it was felt that on a balance the cartoons in the commercial are not overly violent or graphic, and the commercial is unlikely to cause harm to children in the manner envisaged by the code.”

Dissatisfied with the outcome, the father took the matter on appeal to the advertising appeals committee. The appeal committee viewed video footage showing his daughter’s reaction to the advert.

“The video footage showed the daughter sitting with [her father] in what appeared to be a bedroom,” the appeal committee’s ruling reads.

“When the advert was flighted, the daughter immediately reacted hysterically. It was clear something irritated the daughter.” Clientele then consulted a psychologist who concluded that the “commercial is unlikely to intentionally cause harm or trauma to children aged three in general”.

The appeal committee also dismissed the father's application on Friday.

“The committee decision is not unanimous,” the ruling reads.

“There is a view that with the high levels of violence in SA, especially against children and women, the advert should not be condoned. Since children are impressionable, they are likely to emulate what they see in the advert. Though this was a minority view and did not carry the day, it is an important factor for advertisers to bear foremost in their minds when they form or devise adverts that are likely to be viewed by children and which might impress upon such young minds.”

The committee described the reaction of the child when watching the advert as “concerning”.

“But it is difficult for the committee to conclude on a balance of probabilities that the reaction has to do entirely with the ‘blob’ characters in the advert and what happens to them,” the ruling reads.

“It could be the result of some other experience of the child that she associates with the advert. It is simply difficult to tell in this regard and to condemn the advert when a causal connection has not been established between the daughter’s hysterical reaction and aspects of the advert.

“We are of the view that the psychologist’s caution that the daughter’s situation requires proper consultation and investigation with an appropriate expert psychologist to identify the actual cause of her distress regarding the advert is important. No generalisation can be made without such proper consultation and investigation. As a result, the appeal is dismissed.”

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