Asda Christmas ad prompts sexism complaints

As of midday on Wednesday (7 November), the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has recevied 33 complaints (up from 24 yesterday afternoon) but has not yet decided whether to investigate the spot, which was created by Saatchi & Saatchi.

An ASA spokesman said the general nature of the complaints is that the ad is offensive because it is sexist to both men and women, and reinforces stereotypes.

Some complaints focus on the strapline, which is "Behind every great Christmas there's mum and behind mum there's Asda", claiming that this suggests that men, or fathers, do not have a role in contributing to Christmas

Other complaints object that the ad suggests that preparing for Christmas is solely a mother's job.

Fathers 4 Justice said several of the complaints had come from its members and that it had submitted its own complaints to Asda and the ASA this morning (7 November).

A Fathers 4 Justice spokeswoman said the letter to Asda gave the store chain a deadline of 10 days to pull the ad and make an apology for what she called a "completely unacceptable" ad that was "grossly insulting" to fathers who won't be seeing their children at Christmas.

The spokeswoman added that Fathers 4 Justice would be open to Asda amending the ad but qualified this by saying it would be difficult to edit out all the moments that were offensive, as from the beginning the dad does not have a say in the Christmas tree selection.

Asda has yet to respond to a request for comment.

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This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk