You’ve got to admire some advertising campaigns, for both quality and sheer chutzpah. Iceland’s Palm Oil campaign Christmas advert is definitely both. It’s a lovely advert, with a good message as you can see:

The narrative they’ve gone with is:

The Advertising Standards Authority, however, have been quite clear:

So, in summary, the private pre-clearance authority Clearcast, told Iceland it might not pass the ASA, due to the use of Greenpeace’s footage which might be deemed political.

But sensing a way of turning a potential loss into a massive win, Iceland’s marketing team ‘leaked’ the video online, claiming it had been banned. The result:

  • 2.5 million views on Youtube
  • 500k retweets over 2 tweets
  • 500k signatures on Change.org to force the ASA to revoke the ban.

This really couldn’t have gone any better for Iceland, but I do feel for the ASA in this instance, having to issue one ignored denial after another.