Tombola Bingo have had one of their TV advertisements banned again and this time it has been on racial ground.  The ASA have banned their add saying that they breached CAP TV Advertising Standards Code rules 6.1 (Offence) and 6.6 (Harmful or negative stereotypes) after they received just two complaints.

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I still can’t believe this.  Just two complaints was all it took to have their advertisement banned and to be quite honest with you I personally didn’t see anything racist about the advert.

This advertisement for Tombola Bingo was shown during prime time TV and I’m sure you probably saw it yourself.  The advert featured two men on a beach.  There was a white man who was wearing a suit and a black man who was dressed in a floral shirt who was playing a ukulele.  The black man sang a song to everything the other man said.  So basically whatever the white man said about Tombola Bingo the black man then repeated only in song version.  I am guessing that this was to emphasis what Tombola Bingo was offering their online bingo players but it seems that two people took offence to the advert and claimed that it was racist.

The advertising watchdog Clearcast stated that they reviewed this advert on a number of occasions and it did not appear to them to enforce a negative racial stereotype.  Their view of this advert was that the tropical island of Tombola was completely fictional and it was meant to represent a host and a member of staff and that the repetition of the advert was just to reinforce the offer that Tombola was making.  The characters that were portrayed in this advert were only meant to reflect the friendly and welcoming nature that you can expect to find at the Tombola bingo website.

The ASA however did not agree with this interpretation of the advert and they upheld the complaints and Tombola Bingo cannot show this advert again.

This really is bad news for Tombola bingo who had a previous advert banned because people said it appealed to children.  This was the advert that featured a fairground.  I wonder what they are going to have to do next.  I personally didn’t find the advert offensive but two viewers obviously did and standards are there to protect people from being discriminated against.  Let’s hope the next Tombola advert has better luck.

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Until next time,

Watch Those Balls,