A complaint on an Aldi cheese ad has been dismissed by Advertising Standards Bureau, despite accusations it demonstrated animal cruelty.
The ad opens with a small dog looking at the screen, when a metal “claw” - the kind seen in arcade machine games – appears above the dog, picking him up and throwing him off the screen.
One complainant says: “This ad trivialises animal cruelty issues. It is not funny. Children will imitate it - lifting dogs by their heads. Animals are not toys and should not be equated with toys.
“This act of lifting the dig is totally inappropriate. This is called cruelty to a live animal. This ad also encourages children to copy this act.”
Aldi responded saying the claw is superimposed over the footage of the dog and “no reasonable viewer” would conclude the claw ever touches the dog.
“There is nothing in advertisement that amounts to animal cruelty. Nor is there anything in the advertisement that would be capable of encouraging children to carry out acts of cruelty towards animals,” Aldi says.
The ASB dismissed the complaints, agreeing with Aldi that most reasonable members of the community would understand that this scene is a computer generated image and it does not show a real metal claw lifting a real dog in this manner.
See the ad below:
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