{"id":232375,"date":"2026-01-14T08:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/232375\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T08:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:16:09","slug":"advertising-complaints-board-finds-f-word-branding-not-likely-to-be-offensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/232375\/","title":{"rendered":"Advertising complaints board finds F-word branding not likely to be offensive"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hamilton<\/a>-based company has also withdrawn an advertisement which promoted two bottles of gin and one of tonic as a \u201ccrisis management pack\u201d after a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority<\/a> (ASA) that this was not socially responsible.<\/p>\n

The complaint under the Advertising Standards Code and the Alcohol Advertising and Promotion Code was brought by the Communities Against Alcohol Harm lobby group. <\/p>\n

Its community affairs advisor, Nathan Cowie, complained about the \u201ccrisis management\u201d promotion and the branding of eight varieties of gin, all of which used F-words on their labels.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to drop F-bombs in your advertising, now you can,\u201d Cowie commented today in response to the ASA decision that the branding did not reach a threshold to cause serious or widespread offence.<\/p>\n

Cowie said his group complained on behalf of a \u201cconcerned community stakeholder\u201d who worked as a counsellor dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault and alcohol abuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were concerned about the harm they see from alcohol in the community, and the incredibly poor standards of social responsibility on display from this advertiser,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Advertising Standards Complaints Board has not upheld parts of this complaint related to the liberal use of F-bombs in the naming, labelling and advertising of these products,\u201d Cowie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless fixed by a higher authority, this creates a precedent where advertising standards are very permissive of profanity, and the bar for a high standard of social responsibility is significantly lowered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cowie in his complaint specifically quoted an advertisement which read in part: \u201cWhen life throws a year like 2025 at you, sometimes the only strategy is to pour a stiff G&T and ride it out. The Crisis Management Pack is your emergency pack for surviving clusterf***s large and small.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ASA complaints board found that the advertisement suggested that the effects of consuming alcohol can improve or enhance a situation, and \u201cthis was not socially responsible\u201d.<\/p>\n

The board said it would have upheld that part of the complaint, but considered the matter settled after the advertisement was withdrawn by the company.<\/p>\n

A majority of the board did not uphold the section of the complaint about the product names and website advertising for the \u201cGood George F***ery\u201d series of gin products.<\/p>\n

They said the F-word was being used in a humorous way which \u201cdoes not reach the threshold to cause serious or widespread offence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Advertising targeted to adults<\/p>\n

It also said the labelling and advertising was targeted to a limited adult audience.<\/p>\n

The company said in its response to the complaint that its advertising campaign was in the context of shared experiences in recent years, starting with the Covid-19<\/a> pandemic and including rising living costs, natural disasters and social and global uncertainty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe creative intention behind the \u2018F***ery Series\u2019 is to reflect that shared sentiment through light-hearted, cathartic adult humour,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Good George Brewing company has been selling its F-word branded gin for five years, and has had only one complaint in that time.<\/p>\n

The product names were intended as humorous exaggerations of public mood, not literal statements about alcohol or its effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tone is deliberately irreverent but benign: it acknowledges the chaos of recent years in a way many adults understand, without suggesting that alcohol improves mood, solves problems or assists with coping,\u201d the company told the complaints board.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe advertisements are directed solely at adults, appear only in adult-appropriate channels, and would be interpreted by a reasonable adult as satirical rather than instructional, therapeutic or prescriptive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement today, the company said that the ASA decision recognised what its customers already understood: \u201cThis range is clearly satirical, aimed at adults, and intended as light-hearted commentary on some pretty challenging years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe dog who said “bugger”, from the Toyota advert in 1999. <\/p>\n

The ASA decision canvassed previous findings, including one in 1999 against a television advertisement for the Toyota Hilux which repeatedly used the word \u201cbugger\u201d<\/a>, finally spoken by a dog who became mired in mud.<\/p>\n

That advert, which attracted multiple complaints, was described by one as \u201clow intelligence, foul-mouthed humour\u201d.<\/p>\n

The complaints board at that time said that \u201cbugger\u201d was part of New Zealand rural humour and was unlikely to cause widespread offence because the advert was screened after 8.30pm.<\/p>\n

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hamilton-based company has also withdrawn an advertisement which promoted two bottles of gin and one of tonic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1032,1763,5195,2372,1409,12797,30701,14158,156,11424,137946,13232,120,111,139,5006,69,46611,6289,30619,544,39531,1961,61,7188,27630],"class_list":["post-232375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-advertising","tag-article","tag-be","tag-board","tag-branding","tag-complaint","tag-complaints","tag-context","tag-entertainment","tag-finds","tag-fword","tag-inclusion","tag-likely","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-offensive","tag-readers","tag-repeatedly","tag-some","tag-swear","tag-this","tag-to","tag-uses","tag-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}