Nicofresh Advertisement Believed To Be Misunderstood

A poster campaign that implied that a relationship between a young black man and an elderly white woman is socially unacceptable has been banned for being ageist and racist.

Nicofresh, an e-cigarette company, ran the campaign featuring the couple embracing on a couch with the strapline “No tobacco. No taboo”.

The company said that the campaign was based on the observation that cigarette smoking is now considered “taboo”.

The company said that it “could not be denied that relationships between two people of different races, or age groups, had, within living memory, been subject to social taboo status”.

Nicofresh said that at its heart the message of the ad was an “entirely positive one”.

However, the Advertising Standards Authority received complaints that the ad was offensive because it implied that an interracial relationship was socially unacceptable, as was a relationship between an elderly woman and young man.

The ASA said that consumers looking at the ad would think the a relationship between an older and younger individual and a couple of different races was something that was “unusual or socially unacceptable”.

“Because of that, we concluded that the ad was likely to cause serious or widespread offence on the grounds of race and age,” the ASA said. “The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Nicofresh to ensure their marketing communications did not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence in future, and to take particular care to avoid causing offence on the grounds of race or age.”