Copywriting can get you into a lot of trouble.

The title of this post is a direct quote from Peter Sherrard, Head of Communications at budget airline Ryanair. Sherrard used those words to describe the worthies of the Advertising Standards Authority. The ASA has recently ruled that this Ryanair newspaper ad…

… was inappropriate (ugh, horrible word) for publication. What it actually said was:

We considered that her [i.e, the girl in the ad] appearance and pose, in conjunction with the heading ‘Hottest’, appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour and was irresponsible and likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

It’s not often you’ll find me defending Ryanair. The company’s ads are often very offensive (which isn’t to say they don’t work), and from what I’ve heard CEO Michael O’Leary seems to be one of the less pleasant people in business (which isn’t to say he’s no good at his job).

But I have to say I’m right behind the airline here. The ad is fine. You could argue that it’s sexist. But it’s hardly more sexist than thousands of ads that appear every day, or the images of topless or half-clothed girls that decorate large sections of the UK press.

I reckon that the people at the ASA haven’t criticised the ad because it’s offensive, but because they fancy themselves the guardians of our morals. London-based, university-educated and middle-class, they seem to think that the slightest flash of skin from a pretend schoolgirl will have the rest of us - provincial, uncritical, Gadarene swine - slobbering at the gates of every school in the country, ready to pounce on the first helpless kiddie that walks past.

When the ASA does this sort of thing it isn’t, strictly speaking, acting as a censor - it’s not a state body, and it doesn’t have hard regulatory powers. Its role as an industry-sponsored monitor of misleading advertising is justifiable and welcome. What it shouldn’t do is tell us what is tasteful and what is not. I don’t need a bunch of sinecured busybodies to tell me what I ought to find offensive. I can, and should, make up my own mind. If an ad offends me I won’t buy the product it advertises and I might think twice before buying another copy of the publication in which I saw it.

In other words, the regulation of offensiveness can safely be left to the market. The ASA should stick to weeding out the genuine liars and dodgy dealers, and let us decide for ourselves about the quality of advertising, voting against material we dislike with our feet and our wallets.