A television ad for a comparison site featuring an animated cash-eating monster must no longer screen before 7.30pm after a young child copied it by swallowing coins.
The GoCompare.com ad shows a woman shocked to find the small Monster Bill eating the cash from her neighbour’s purse.
The neighbour explains that the monster was her home insurance bill, to which the woman exclaims: “It’s eating all your money.”
A parent, who said their four-year-old child swallowed coins after watching the ad, complained that it could encourage emulation by younger children.
GoCompare said that while there was a clear difference between swallowing coins and Monster Bill’s eating of fake paper money, it was concerned by the complainant’s experience and “would never wish for that to happen”.
It said it would apply a restriction to prevent the ad from screening during or adjacent to programmes commissioned for, principally directed at or likely to appeal to children under 16.
Ad clearance agency Clearcast said that while the eating of paper money was not to be recommended, any potential harm could not be compared to the swallowing of coins, adding that as eating paper was not especially harmful it did not see the need to impose a timing restriction on the ad.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it was concerned that the ad might encourage young children to attempt to swallow money themselves, which was “a dangerous practice to emulate”.
“As such, while we acknowledged that the ad was suitable for older children, there was a risk that the ad would cause harm to younger children,” it said.
It ruled that the ad must not be broadcast again in its current form before 7.30pm.
A GoCompare spokesman said: “Our advert featuring Monster Bill was never designed to appeal to children, and while we believe it is unlikely that the advert would influence a child to copy the character, we understand the concern and are happy to apply the 7.30pm time restriction.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here