LAST YEAR’S NEWS: An image from a Gucci ad campaign that was this week declared “irresponsible” by the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority had already ceased to exist in December of last year, although Gucci said in a statement Thursday it stands by the picture in question.
This week the authority ruled that an image from Gucci’s cruise 2016 ad campaign featured an “unhealthily thin” model. The ad it was referring to appeared in December on the Times of London Web site. The watchdog said it had received a complaint about the model’s body size.
“We take our responsibilities as an advertiser very seriously in the way models are selected for, and presented in, our advertising campaigns,” a spokeswoman from Gucci said on Thursday.
“We have noted, but are not in agreement with, the assessment of the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority, an independent regulator, in relation to one model featured in one image from our cruise 2016 campaign. The campaign itself expired at the end of December 2015.”
In the ruling report that appears on the ASA website, Gucci also noted that thinness was subjective, and believed “both models had slim builds, but were not depicted in a way that could be interpreted as unhealthily thin.”
The ASA ruling declared that the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.3, which refers to responsible advertising. According to ASA’s Web site: “We considered that the model leaning against the wall appeared to be unhealthily thin in the image, and therefore concluded that the ad was irresponsible.”