The advertising watchdog has banned a Facebook ad that used an image of a child that appeared to have suffered abuse to promote life insurance.
The ad, for insurance company BestLifeProtect, ran with the title “The biggest mistake parents can make?”
It featured an image of a child with a black eye with the accompanying text: “If you have a child that depends on you, you need to read about this before it may be too late …”. A link led to a website offering life insurance policies.
The Advertising Standards Authority received eight complaints that the ad caused unjustifiable stress in order to sell a product.
The ASA said that the implication of the ad is that parents needed life insurance to avoid their children being harmed or neglected if they died.
“We considered that the the ad played on parents’ fears of their children being harmed to promote a product,” said the ASA. “We considered that a number of consumers would find the reference to child abuse, and in particular the image of a young boy with a black eye, upsetting”.
The ASA banned the ad ruling that the references to child abuse were likely to cause “unjustifiable distress” and were in breach of the advertising code.
Facebook said the ad had been removed from its social network for violating its own advertising guidelines.
