GrandWest Ad Not Offensive Says ASA

September 5 - GrandWest, the popular Cape Town casino, enjoyed a taste of victory this week, after the South African Advertising Standards Authority ruled in its favor regarding a billboard ad that appears on the M5 in the Mother City.

The ad, which depicts a man smoking a cigar with four king cards on either side of him, has the words "Four Kings Fantastic" written across the billboard.

A complaint was received at the Advertising Standards Authority offices by a concerned consumer who said that, as an Afrikaans speaker, he found the ad's wording offensive as it could be read - in his language as - "f***king".

After investigating the complain, however, the ASA ruled that what was important in this case was the context of the ad. While the ASA admitted that anybody reading the ad could possibly understand the play on the words and take offence, the context in which they were written was more important in this instance.

The ASA said that when evaluating the meaning of each word separately in the dictionary (ie. Four Kings Fantastic), there was nothing vulgar about them.

In addition, ASA also said that the ad was clearly directed at gamblers as it promoted GrandWest casino and the 'four kings' concept was clearly referring to a 'four of kind' hand in poker.

Referring to the language issue in the complaint, the Advertising Standards Authority said that since the ad was written in English, an Afrikaans speaker could not claim to take offence to the wording. ASA said that it would not be fair to limit advertisers in the wording of their ads under the threat that a phrase may be construed as vulgar by another language speaker.

Read our totally unoffensive Grand West casino review.

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