The latest instalment of Jaguar’s “Good to be Bad” ad campaign, starring Tom Hiddleston, has been banned for encouraging irresponsible driving.
The campaign, which started with a big-budget US Super Bowl TV ad using the strapline “It’s good to be bad”, features Hiddleston, Ben Kingsley and Mark Strong.
The latest YouTube ad, which promoted the F-Type coupe, was titled “The Art of Villainy” and explored why British actors play the best villains.
It featured Hiddleston discussing what makes a great villain and revving the car in an underground car park before driving off at speed and quoting Shakespeare’s Richard II.
The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that the YouTube ad encouraged unsafe driving and was therefore socially irresponsible.
Jaguar Land Rover said that the Hiddleston ad was set almost entirely in the car park and that “during this time the car barely moved”.
When the car did leave the car park, it was shown travelling at “normal road speeds”, and “accelerated briefly”, and that police were present at the filming to confirm the speed limit was not breached.
The ASA agreed that the “primary focus” of the ad was not speed.
The watchdog said that the noise of acceleration and speed with which the car left the basement “appeared to suggest significant speed within an enclosed environment”.
This was not helped by Hiddleston saying “now brace yourselves” as the car accelerated through the streets and out of a tunnel leaving other vehicles in its wake.
“We considered that the second part of the ad suggested that the car was being driven at excessive speeds and that the ad therefore encouraged irresponsible driving,” the ASA ruled. “We told Jaguar Land Rover not to portray speed of driving behaviour that might encourage motorists to drive irresponsibly in future.”
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