Earlier this week, Clearcast, the body responsible for clearing Britain’s TV adverts, said it had been forced to take down its own Facebook page and take pictures of its staff off the website after they and the company became the subject of a “substantial amount of abuse”. The trouble centred around an ad that Iceland, a low-cost food retailer in the U.K., had sought to run around Christmas.
For the past decade or so, Britain’s Christmas ads have taken on a blockbuster quality, with some of the largest retailers splashing out millions on pricey, saccharine ads that seek to get people in the Christmas spirit, often hiring top names from within the film world and beyond. Last year, for example, Michel Gondry, an Oscar-winning director, made one for department store chain John Lewis about a boy who befriended the “monster-under-the-bed”. Brands in the U.K. spent around £6 billion last year on advertising around Christmas, as retailers stepped up their spend in the face of vigorous competition on screen.
The Iceland ad had a different twist, however. “There’s a rang-tan in my bedroom and I don’t know what to do, she keeps playing with my teddies and keeps borrowing my shoes,” begins the advert, originally made by campaign group Greenpeace, featuring a doe-eyed little girl in the voice of Emma Thompson, the award-winning actress. The ad, which quickly takes a much darker turn as the cartoon orangutan explains to the child the grim reality of why she left her home. “There’s a human in my forest and I don’t know what to do, they destroy all of my trees for your food and your shampoo... they’re burning it for palm oil so I thought I’d stay with you,” says the orangutan, as menacing diggers and forest-destroying equipment chase her out of her homeland. The message chimed with Iceland’s decision to go palm-oil free earlier this year, amid a global campaign to cut usage of the product because of concerns about the huge deforestation programme it had triggered, threatening animal species such as the orangutan.
Rules broken
Clearcast stopped the ad from being broadcast because it broke rules banning political advertising because of the involvement of Greenpeace. However, that aspect was lost in the furore that soon surrounded the ad — with many accusing the company of banning the ad because it was “too political”. A social media storm ensued, as the ad was watched over 4 million times online within the space of a week. Clearcast said it had received hundreds of phone calls, 3,000 tweets and 3,500 emails, and nearly 9,00,000 had signed the petition calling for the ad to be aired.
The controversy has also put in the frame Britain’s regime for controlling political advertising on television. The rules came into force through 2003 legislation and have withstood previous attempts at challenges.
Animal Defenders International, whose 2005 ad of a girl and a chimpanzee in chains in an animal cage was blocked, took their case all the way to the European Court of Justice, which upheld the U.K. ruling. The controversy over political advertising during the Brexit referendum — which highlighted the need for strict scrutiny — also makes it unlikely that there will be a move to change the rules any time soon.
In the meantime, the orangutan and palm oil is likely to remain firmly in the public discourse in the U.K., beyond the screens and social media. Iceland is planning to send life-size robotic orangutans through the busy shopping districts in the run-up to Christmas.
Vidya Ram works for The Hindu and is based in London.