Barclays bee sting ad banned by ASA

A television advertisement by Barclays Bank showing a man suffering an allergic reaction to a bee sting has been withdrawn, following a number of complaints.

The ad showed a man being stung in the mouth by a bee or a wasp that had climbed into a drinks can. He ran to a nearby lake to cool down and his face was shown to be visibly swollen. He then fell into the water, emerging covered in weeds and mud and howling in pain. The man then approached a restaurant, where people began to scream at his appearance.

The ad finished with police shooting the man with a tranquiliser, before he was arrested and a voiceover said: “Statistically, you’re more likely to be arrested than change your bank account”.

The Advertising Standards Authority received over a hundred complaints about the ad, with the majority of people claiming that the ad was offensive to allergy sufferers because “it made light of a potentially fatal situation”.

Nearly a hundred viewers claimed to have suffered personal distress from seeing the ad, because they or their loved ones, suffered from allergies. More than 20 viewers also said that they, or people they knew, had nearly or actually died from the same adverse reaction depicted in the ad.

The ASA upheld the complaints and said that the ad should not be shown again, due to a “significant number of viewers” being “clearly distressed” by seeing the ad.

Seven viewers also complained that their children had been frightened by the commercial, while 12 viewers complained that the ad was “horrific”, due to the man’s appearance.

These complaints were not upheld by the ASA, nor were seven other complaints that the way the man was photographed by police at the end of the ad was reminiscent of ‘happy slapping’ attacks or alleged solider activity in the Iraq war.

Barclays said that it “very much regretted” that the commercial had caused distress or offence to a number of viewers.

The company said that the ad had intended to show an exaggerated sequence of different events, which ended with the hero being mistaken for a ‘Swamp Thing’ rather than a man.

Barclays said that the intention had always been to create an “amusing and light-hearted” commercial, not to upset or offend viewers.

The advert had already been pulled, Barclays said, and they had decided not to run it again.

(KMcA/SP)