Durex Ad: Anybody Home At AIC? | ChinaLegalBlog.com

2010-01-12

Durex Ad: Anybody Home At AIC?

I wonder if this ad got yanked? Quite salacious, if I do say so myself.

A condom video presenting female orgasms from around the world? You know you want to watch. Except, there's nothing to see. Just a black screen with audio and titles like "Ingenue," "Gaspingly" and "Sobbingly." Yeah, I've heard a lot of sobs through the years from women in my bed, though for different reasons. There's also "Lamblike," which, from the sound of it, goes a tad heavy on the mint jelly. As for "American Style," well, on Jersey Shore, or in the apartment next door to mine on a Saturday night, maybe. Durex is the advertiser, China is the country of origin. Ads of the World credits Exis for creative development. (AdWeek)

I've done a bit of legal ad clearance work here in China, which consists of playing the "that might be too sensitive" game and pointing out unsubstantiated claims in ad copy, storyboards, produced ads. It's fun work, actually.

No way I would have given the green light to the above ad for this market. Could it have aired with no problems? Of course. But I think there is a high probability that one serious complaint to the AIC (Administration of Industry and Commerce, which has general jurisdiction over advertising) and this would have been yanked.

I've never done any legal work for a condom company, so I have no idea how that particular product is regulated here. That being said, if it is specifically regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, then the ad would have been required to get clearance before airing.

That's the interesting thing about ad regulators here. They might pull an ad that seems quite innocuous, while something like this Durex ad gets aired and no one says a peep. Some of it is chance: since regulators cannot pre-screen everything, ads go forward without a hitch unless and until someone complains about them. The problem for advertising lawyers, of course, is that there is no way of guessing beforehand whether someone will complain or not (i.e. no way to quantify the risk).

Update: Hey, why am I reading about this from AdWeek instead of my usual source of everything that is China advertising, Little Red Book? Rand must be off on holiday with those AIC guys.

Tags: China Law