ASA takes the fizz out of Tango ad

Tango is renowned for its bizarre style of advertisements, however its latest offering – entitled Pipes – was deemed to have gone one step too far by some viewers.

The TV commercial for the soft drink showed a young man wrapped in a carpet filled with oranges that lay on top of a pyramid of concrete construction pipes. The pyramid was held together with a rope, one end of which was attached to a goat. As the goat moved away, the pyramid collapsed and the man tumbled uncontrollably fast down a steep hill. He then crashed into a tree and two pipes hit him consecutively. The man emerged from the carpet, drenched in juice but completely unharmed and smiling. ‘You know when you’ve been Tango’d,’ announces the voice-over.

The viewers who were particularly upset by the ad complained that it trivialised and condoned a harmful situation, and could even encourage children to play with potentially lethal construction materials.

In fact, one of the four complaints to the ASA – which took over the regulation of broadcast advertisements from Ofcom in November 2004 – came from relatives of a boy who was killed in an accident involving concrete pipework. Another complainant pointed out that the TV commercial could jeopardise the construction industry’s current efforts to discourage children from playing with construction materials.

Because of the dangerous nature of the ad’s potential effects, Lord Borrie, the ASA Chairman, took the unprecedented decision to ban the advert with immediate effect, ahead of a formal investigation.
 
Both the advertiser and advertising agency defended the Tango ad by saying they believed the public would recognise it as pure fantasy and entertainment. Nevertheless, they fully accepted the complaints and Tango owner Britvic agreed to withdraw it, offering genuine apologies for any offence caused.

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre, which is responsible for pre-clearing TV commercials before they are aired, defended their decision to give the ad clearance. The BACC believed the ad was obviously surreal and the very fact that it wasn’t set in a building site - or indeed anywhere realistic - suggested that the stunt could not be copied and the behaviour was not condoned. Only the very young wouldn’t appreciate the fantastic content of the ad, it said, and with this in mind it had decided to allow it to be shown only after the 9pm watershed.

Although the ASA agreed that viewers may be familiar with the Tango style, it judged that previous commercials were far harder to copy. Those ads required equipment that was not readily available or accessible and children were unlikely to perceive the scenarios as at all realistic.

The new commercial, however, showed someone rolling down a hill – an activity appealing to many children. This in itself could cause serious injury if copied and if pipes - which are found near many roadworks and building sites – were involved, the danger would be greater still.

Above all, the ASA concluded that the impression given by the ad was that construction materials are fun to play with and that there are no consequences to that dangerous activity, except perhaps having fun.

Because this is in breach of rules relating to both the health & safety and physical harm of children in the CAP (broadcast) TV Code, the complaints by viewers were upheld and the advertisement will not be shown again.

Read the ASA's adjudication in full [PDF document]

Read the TV Advertising Standards Code.