Adverts featuring businessmen dancing in high heels and shorts and blind footballers kicking cats attracted the most complaints last year.
MoneySuperMarket dominated the top ten with its three adverts featuring Gary the dancing bodyguard, the twerking businessman Dave and his builder rival Colin. They received a combined 2,491 complaints from viewers who found Gary’s dance moves distasteful and argued that the adverts featuring Dave and Colin could be seen as homophobic and encourage hate crimes.
Match.com’s advert showing a woman removing her female partner’s top and passionately kissing her received 896 complaints from viewers who believed it was sexually explicit and inappropriately scheduled.
Paddy Power’s advert featuring blindfolded men playing football — and apparently kicking a cat by mistake — was first shown in 2010, generating more than 1,000 complaints. When it was re-run last year it drew a further 450 submissions to the Advertising Standards Authority.
None of the adverts were banned by the watchdog. Guy Parker, ASA chief executive, said: “The ads that attract the highest number of complaints are often not the ones that need banning. Our action leads to thousands of ads being amended or withdrawn each year, mostly for being misleading, but there wasn’t one misleading ad in the top ten.”