LOreal advert banned in UK - ASA ruling

[jjj]

Even more surprising that you seem unable to read what I've written, and fail to understand what I have communicated.  

Let me give it one, last, desperate try: yes, a load of crap is written in cosmetic advertising; the entire industry is built on dreams and wishful thinking; women buy either what they imagine might be the new flavour of the month or, alternatively, they stick with what they know and enjoy and feel works for them, becomes a part of their personality! For example: my wife was a Chanel 5 girl from the age of fifteen until she died; she'd use nothing else. I don't accept the idea some of you put forward that any woman is stupid enough to believe, think, imagine, dream, fantasize that a few applications of cream A is going to take ten years off her weathered skin, especially if she has ben knocking around on yachts! Even less will she think that cream B will remove fifteen of those delightfully sybaritic years.

Cosmetics have smell, they add texture and colour and all manner of artificial delights to what is, otherwise, the same thing that covers your ass. Women know perfectly well that Nature often needs a little helping hand, and why deny them the opportunity by legislating that their game, their mental adventure is making them victim to some imaginary crime, when all the time it makes them feel good? Were that not so, do you imagine that the cosmetics industry would be the backbone that supports the haute couture industry? Leave women in peace and stop trying to interfere with their pleasures and enjoyment; I have yet to see the sales lady with the Paulo Beretta 9mm standing beside the Revlon counter.

For God's sake, guys, don't try to tell them that you know better!

That's it: you understand or it flies right over your heads, or you think it condescending; for me, es igual.

The bit you seem to miss it that I don't object to cosmetics ads. If people want to advertise a lipstick or mascara or whatever I don't mind in the slightest. So not sure why you keep arguing against me on that point. However if a lipstick claimed it prevented oral cancer when that is not actually the case.......then I may object. I'm simply against mendacity in any form of advertising.

Which has nothing/nada/zilch to do with anyone knowing better than someone else.

[jjj]

It may well be that in 50 or so years, some of the views which you currently hold dear will be regarded as absurd. People may even resort to playground insults such as "stupid" to describe them.

I do not see any problem with that. I myself think some views or opinions I have held in the past were stupid or ignorant. And have modified them as I acquired greater knowledge or understanding. That's how progress works.
Saying something is stupid is hardly a playground insult if it is simply descriptive of what something is.

Quote from: jjj on 2012-02-09, 07:08:45
The ad is asserting men are better than women. Yet their maths is saying that women are in fact equal to men and that is why it is a bad use of maths. If when doubling the amount of voters [by adding women] it only doubles the irresponsibility, it means that men and women are equally irresponsible, thus contradicting their stance.

Which is precisely what I wrote in response to your original post. Are you sure you're not Jack Koerner in disguise? Look at what you wrote originally, quoted below, and try to justify it.

Quote from: jjj on 2012-02-07, 23:53:28
This is a fantastically stupid ad. As whilst it tries to demean women, it actually says all men are irresponsible.

incidentally, suggesting that your arithmetic is deficient is not an attack ad hominem. It's a rational deduction from your rather bizarre shifts of stance.

No justification needed as second post simply explains what the first one said, but in more detail.

You said
'It doesn't say that all men are irresponsible. The sentence "Woman's suffrage would double the irresponsible vote" merely implies that the same proportion of women are irresponsible as of men (and that there would be equal numbers of enfranchised men and women).'

But what you forget is that the ad is attacking women, not some women, but women as a whole. Hence the doubling of irresponsibility therefore implies all men are irresponsible as the sexes are split 50/50, because one doesn't really take from this ad that they are asking for just the bright women to be allowed the vote. Either way it completely undermines their entire point, which is the very, very, very important and relevant part, not the percentage of human irresponsibility
And the stupid maths is to repeat myself, is in the use of the maths [which scuppers the argument] not the actual arithmetic. So no shift in my view, as my stance was always that the poster undermines itself due to the poor logic. Hardly a 'bizarre' shift of stance.

[jjj]

Where do those regulatory bodies come from? Do they descend from Heaven? Though none of "us" may be qualified to make judgments, these Heavenly regulatory bodies automatically contain people qualified to monitor "those" cases and regulate them? A term like "going overboard," indicates you feel better qualified than other people to make a judgment call about a human activity whose value is subjective. Murder, for instance, is a fact. There's the cadaver. But advertising isn't a fact. It's alsays a judgment call. Whether or not an ad is "going overboard" is a determination that needs to be made by the person viewing the ad. Yes, some people will make bad judgments, but that's all part of being free.

It's not always a judgement call. If you claim your product can do 100mpg, when it can only do 25mpg, it is misrepresentation.
If you claim a skin cream can make you look 40 years younger when in reality it makes zero difference, it is misrepresentation.
Lying in UK advertising is not allowed, not sure why some people have a problem with that.

And murder is very rarely a simple fact, cadaver or no cadaver. That's why we have judges and juries. It could be manslaughter, it could be an accident, it could be justified self defence, it could be natural causes, it could even be suicide and so on.

[jjj]

Maybe it hasn't occurred to you, JJJ, that when someone takes a position that he, because of superior wisdom, has the right to make purchasing decisions for people of "lesser" wisdom, that position represents a serious ad hominem attack on all those" lesser" people.

The problem with your daft theory is that no-one has actually taken that position.
Objecting to lying in adverts has nothing to do with deciding what others can buy. People can buy what ever they want as far as I'm concerned.

[Rob C]

The bit you seem to miss it that I don't object to cosmetics ads. If people want to advertise a lipstick or mascara or whatever I don't mind in the slightest. So not sure why you keep arguing against me on that point. However if a lipstick claimed it prevented oral cancer when that is not actually the case.......then I may object. I'm simply against mendacity in any form of advertising.

Which has nothing/nada/zilch to do with anyone knowing better than someone else.

And the point that I tried to make, and that you continually choose not to see or accept, is that cosmetic advertising, the cosmetics industry, isn't based on any reality; it's based on wishful thinking and aimed at a target market that already understands that, but is happy to play along with it for many basic reasons that don't have to have a solid basis in fact. It's dream-peddling, just as is fashion, pretty-girl calendars, and anything that removes the human condition from its somewhat miserable reality as one of the less attractive animals. There isn't any serious problem such as per your cancer example, in which case I would have agreed with you 100%.

As I think I said earlier, it's a 'crime' without victim, a game played by knowing and complicit partners, and they should be left alone to play it; it's not about lying to some innocent public at all: it, the cosmetics-buying public is anything but innocent and even more sceptical than you or I might believe.

Now, if something could help me grow more hair...

Rob C

[jjj]

But as I repeatedly state I don't really give a rat's arse about the cosmetics industry or any aspirational advertising per se. Which you still seem to think I do.
And also please try and understand that the deceitful product you seem to want to defend was not makeup/cosmetics.

What I find utterly baffling about the apologists for this sort of advertising is that they seem to think it's OK to lie, make false claims and be generally misleading. Yet if Canon were to claim a camera was a 22MP camera when it was only a 21MP camera.......

[RawheaD]

What I find utterly baffling about the apologists for this sort of advertising is that they seem to think it's OK to lie, make false claims and be generally misleading. Yet if Canon were to claim a camera was a 22MP camera when it was only a 21MP camera.......

What I find perplexing is that on the one hand, these people accuse others for being presumptuous and condescending, because we *clearly* must think other consumers are imbeciles for wanting there to be some level of regulation against false advertisements, they turn around and make completely groundless assumptions about the adeptness of the consumers of cosmetic products.  "Oh yeah, they're all very smart, *every single one* of them knows that advertisements by cosmetics companies should never be taken at face value".... which might sound flattering, but in reality, is nothing but being completely irresponsible for one's own words.  If there were one (or a thousand, for that matter) consumer that didn't fit that bill... well, certainly, it must be the fault of that one person for not being as smart as all other consumers of cosmetic products.

[Rob C]

But as I repeatedly state I don't really give a rat's arse about the cosmetics industry or any aspirational advertising per se. Which you still seem to think I do.
And also please try and understand that the deceitful product you seem to want to defend was not makeup/cosmetics.

What I find utterly baffling about the apologists for this sort of advertising is that they seem to think it's OK to lie, make false claims and be generally misleading. Yet if Canon were to claim a camera was a 22MP camera when it was only a 21MP camera.......

jjj

"L'Oreal Paris Revitalift Repair 10,"

If that's nothing to do with cosmetics, then how would you classify it? Or are you limiting the discussion to the Photoshop 'abuse', in which case, the rest of the posts would have been redundant?

Rob C