The ASA

The ASA

The ASA stands for the advertising agents authorities and have control of what advertise are and aren’t appropriate, their job role involves receiving complaint letters and looking into cases to decide whether or not it’s appropriate for television, for example if the advert contains adult content they will need to make sure its shown to the public after the watershed, however if an advert gets too many complaints the ASA will ban the advert and in this situation the 50 Cent Reebok advert was banned.

The Reebok 50 Cent advert was officially banned for contravening with the rule known as ‘glamourous gun culture’, this was due to the advert highlighting 50 Cent as being shot 9 times and had distressing shots of symbolic images and sounds such as the red lighting combined with the dripping water and the distress noise of a lady screaming along with a gun shot. The 50 Cent Reebok advert had multiple complaints from viewers as the message of the advert to them seemed to encourage gun violence as the complaints seem to pick out the gun shot sound, the dripping water with red lighting indicating blood, the sound of the radio saying he was shot 9 times and the question at the end ‘tell me who will you massacre next’, which in my opinion means who is going to be the next victim which indicates violence to the viewers. On the other hand the Reebok advert explained that their advert was supposed to inspire people that no matter where you come from or how close you are to death you can achieve anything even when life hits you hard with 9 bullets you can still get up and be who you want to be which explains the message ‘I am what I am’, an Reebok was not intended to increase gun violence but to be a positive message of empowering celebration of the right and freedom and self-expression of individuality.

The Reebok 50 Cent advert primary audience was directed towards 13-25 year old and are the ones who the advert intended to directly communicate with in order to try and get the companies message across to them, however the secondary audience who happen to come in contact with the advert had been really offended by the 50 Cent Reebok advert, the secondary audience received the message of the advert as a growth in gun crime to brainwash younger viewers into becoming criminals which was then reported back to the ASA. An example of primary and secondary audience is a young viewer around the age of 15 watching the Reebok advert on television and then the parents who walk in the room and see the advert who are aged 47 see the advert and have a different opinion than the primary audience. Also at the time the advert was released there was a lot of gun crime violence happening within UK at the time which caused distress for many people giving the advert a negative effect towards the audience.