Ultra Tune has come under fire in the past with its television advertisements depicting women wearing rubber intimidating a store owner while showing the “we’re into rubber” handle, announcing the Australian company’s foray into selling tyres.
It sparked 181 complaints when first shown in 2014, and 418 complaints again in 2016. After being investigated by Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) – a non-government industry-funded organisation – both cases were dismissed.
The objections lodged to the ASB did have some effect in softening the message’s punch – the rubber outfits were replaced with mini skirts in subsequent advertisements.
That didn’t work as well as expected. Viewers took offence at those, leading to 113 complaints in 2016 for the advertisement showing two women in a car balancing on a cliff. That case was also dismissed and there have been more since.
Ultra Tune CEO Sean Buckley said the company now actively seeks to make its advertisements contentious.
“I’m over all this political correctness that is dished out to us by all these do-gooders in the market and around the country,” he said.
“So we’ve taken a position where we don’t follow those guidelines so we make our ads controversial, a bit of fun and throw out political correctness in our commercials. We have achieved that very successfully.”
Mr Buckley said that the complaints were “unfortunate” and that the proportion of protests, in relation to Australia’s population, was low.
“But I think the complaints, when you look at the number of people in Australia, as a ratio of the level of complaints, it’s very low,” he said.
“Just like the complaints, we get a lot of our market – both male and female – commenting and telling us how great it is that we are running these vibrant, funny commercials.
“The car servicing industry is boring. People really don’t like doing it. So we have put in a bit of humour, a bit of fun, a bit of excitement, a bit of Hollywood into our commercials… it’s been a great success.
“I have no problem with the complaints. For every complaint we get three people telling us how great it is.”
Mr Buckley said his company was “consistently” being contacted by advertising groups. “Every time we shoot there’s a problem, some petty thing, we have to address,” he said.
“It’s a bit of a nightmare. We have a team of lawyers working on this now so when we get the script, it is looked at for political correctness.”
Mr Buckley said it is then checked again, then the advertisement is shot, and then it is again checked with lawyers.
“In the train ad (showing two women with a car stalled on railway tracks), they couldn’t get us on sexism but they got us by saying the girls were dumb,” he said. “Under a panic situation, I’d be confused.”
The ad was banned by the ASB.
“Then we had the helicopter one, with the girls being rescued from the cliff, and the carwash with the battery failure, and now we have the new one with Van Damme which is hilarious, and we have another one that we call ‘muffler’ coming up soon.”
Mr Buckley said there was no intention to slow down, adding that there would be “10 or 12 in a series” of advertisements.
He said complaints tend to only come from “social media keyboard warriors” and middle-aged feminists “who are after equality” who missed the light-hearted intent of the ads.
“I don’t care what people say in the marketplace. I own the company, I like the ads. People like the ads. What’s wrong with that?”
By Neil Dowling
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