New Zealand Commercial Approvals Bureau denies banning UK breast cancer ad
The New Zealand Commercial Approvals Bureau (CAB) has denied media reports that it banned a UK breast cancer ad that showed images of real womens’ breasts affected by cancer.
News reports from the region that the ad - created by The Leith Agency and starring Elaine C Smith - had been banned because images of nipples were not approved of by the Bureau filtered through to UK media outlets on Monday, but CAB issued a response soon after.
“For the sake of clarity we did not ban this advertisement,” a spokesman said.
“The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation did not submit this ad for approval and, to the best of my knowledge, had no intention of ever running this commercial in New Zealand.
“They sent us a link to the Scottish ad and asked for our opinion on making a similar ad for New Zealand. Our advice was to avoid nipples and genitalia, which is the advice we give to all advertisers.”
He added: “They then went away and made the advertisement that is currently running and which can be broadcast at all times of the day and so will be seen by the maximum number of New Zealanders.
“The NZBCF could still have gone ahead and copied the NHS Scotland ad and run it online and/or asked us to make an exception. Nothing was ever submitted and the NZBCF never requested an exception.”
In Monday’s media reports, NZBCF chief executive Van Henderson highlighted the benefit of the ad, which brought attention to lesser known symptoms of breast cancer, adding: “We believe the importance of knowing all the signs and symptoms far outweighs the CAB’s concern, and we wanted women to know exactly what those signs look like.”
The ad was shown after the 9pm watershed in Scotland and was reported to have resulted in a 50 per cent spike in the number of women contacting their GPs with concerns about breast cancer.
Content created with:
The Leith Agency
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