MBUK ad

Upgrade bikes ad has been banned by ASA. Not sure about the Knives/Steel connection Upgrade tried using to justify it.

Not sure knives should ever be used in an advert to be honest. It just looks odd to me the advert rather than offensive necessarily.

Never heard of upgrade bikes (at least until this months interview in ST).
What do they say about bad publicity?

Not sure knives should ever be used in an advert to be honest

Apart from advertising cooking products and implements?

🙂
but it is clearly not doing that (and yes Argos can still take photos of them)I assume you are aware of the knife culture issues amongst young people aren't you?
Not exactly sure this encourages it anymore than it encourages you to wrap your t-shirt round your head but it seems to add nothing to the advert and is avoidable.

I am very glad that someone is protecting me from this sort of thing.

Hadn't paid it any attention TBH.

Upgrade Bikes you say?

I've seen the pic now anyway. That guy looks cool. Where can i get a knife? I want to stab something.

Stabbety stabby stab!

Upgrade bikes?

It's DMR and Kinesis innit.

The complaint was made by the City and County of Swansea Trading Standards Service, who thought the portrayal of the knives "condoned and glamorised violence and was irresponsible".

So people are employed to sit and flick through magazines judging content? 😕

Well it seems to have worked regardless of what people think more people will be aware of them now.

Knife adverts? I knew someone would have a STAB at CUTTING them out, but they're in up to the HILT after that SLICE of the action, but they were pretty SHARP about it, eh?

Ba-dum-tishhh. I'm 'ere all week!

Coat, door etc.
😉

Upgrade are the distributors for DMR and Kinesis, no idea how the business model works seeing as DMR and kinesis are both uk based companies?

What's your point peter?

Be fun if they replaced the knives with celery.

Ohhhhhhhhhh….!
Missed that one Pook, well done!
😉

Surely MBUK banned this ad for not having enough boobs. It's all about the target audience!

What's your point peter?

It's just his attempt at cutting-edge humour.

THere's lots of sharp people about this morning.

Oooh! cutting remark, sandwich

You would've thought Simon Ralli would know better

So, if the chavs start smacking each other with Bombers we'll be banning fork ads I presume…oh dear.

What a load of crap…. should they now ban young people from entering kitchens next, afterall there are lots of sharp steel things hidden in draws there. FFS !

yes load of cr@p no issue at all with young people knives stabbing and glamourising
All 72 young people who have died violently in 2008

Forty-three – 61% – of the victims were stabbed, far higher than the 35% of murders which official statistics show are carried out this way across all age groups.

We do have an issue particularily in London and other urban areas
I am youth worker trust me there are more tooled up young people amongst this generation than there was in the past (I am not one of the in my day it was all better but I can read statistics/research). Many/majority do so because they are scared that everyone else is doing the same.
One ban on an advert is unlikely to change much but really what is the point [nice pun eh] of the advert and the use of knives?

Erm, a paronomasia!

It's much less to do with the content of the ad itself than the process by which stuff gets pulled. The Advertising Standards Authority looks into every complaint, and if it's upheld, then an ad gets pulled.

So it's got nothing to do with popular opinion really – if ONE person complains and the ASA thinks they're right, out it goes. In my experience though (ad industry for 7 years now) it rarely gets that far – as soon as a brand gets a whiff that there might be a backlash against an ad, they pull it themselves. Because it's cheaper to lose the money you spent making the ad and buying the space to show it than it is to be on the front of the daily mail three days in a row because you're 'glamourising knife crime.' Stupid, narrow-minded, unrepresentative, undemocratic, but that's how these things work.

Junkyard, it would be very interesting to see just exactly how many of those who killed with a knife were encouraged to do so by an advert in a bike magazine which had a knife in it. I would hazzard a guess and say none. These idiots carry knives because of peer pressure and gang intimidation, common in inner city areas.

Well said CountZero.