Whisky ad featuring a man leaping off a mountain has been banned for promoting risky behavior
Macallan’s advert shows a man falling through the air before growing wings
Text appears which says: ‘Would you risk falling for the chance to fly?’
Complainers said it linked alcohol with daring, toughness and irresponsibility
Macallan said their winged man was a metaphor about decision making
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/
By ROSS IBBETSON
10 April 2019
A whisky advert featuring a man throwing himself off the top of a mountain has been banned for promoting risky behaviour.
The Macallan commercial shows the protagonist spinning wildly through the clouds with air rushing around him while dramatic music reverberates.
He starts to grow feathers on his arms which turn to wings and at the end a banner appears asking: ‘Would you risk falling for the chance to fly?’
The final frame says, ‘The Macallan. Make the call’, accompanied by an image of the whisky in a glass.
Six people complained that the advert – which first appeared in December – was irresponsible and linked alcohol with daring, toughness or irresponsibility.
Edrington, who own Macallan, said it showed a fantastical winged man who was not seen to drink alcohol, and the story was a metaphor about making decisions.
Clearance agency Clearcast said it considered the rule preventing advertisers from linking alcohol with daring behaviour but had decided the campaign was fantastical enough to be acceptable.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the scenes were reminiscent of the extreme sport of base-jumping, and the act of jumping off the cliff was dangerous, potentially fatal and consisted of extreme risk-taking behaviour.
Although the character was not seen consuming alcohol at any point, the ASA said the it ‘made a clear association between an alcoholic product and potentially very dangerous, daring behaviour’, and concluded that it was irresponsible.
The ASA ruled it must not appear again in its current form.
A spokeswoman for The Macallan said: ‘The overall theme of the global campaign is about bold decision making and targeting a new generation of luxury consumers.
‘This will continue to be the focus of the global campaign, though we will of course take on board the ASA’s comments in relation to the film elements in the UK market as we develop the campaign in the future.’
Bottles of Macallan’s single malt retail for around £40 at the lower end, rising into thousands of pounds for rarer vintages.
A 60-year-old bottle of Macallan sold at Bonhams auction house in Edinburgh last Saturday for £615,063.