TV advert banned for road safety reasons

A TV advert has been banned for encouraging unsafe driving, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decided. The Twix chocolate advert, called Two Is More Than One, had been shown on both TV and Video on Demand.

The ad shows a man driving a car while being followed, before applying the hand brake, swerving to the right-hand side of the road and breaking through a metal barrier. A man is seen inside the car falling down a rocky hill, before the vehicle is then shown upside down but placed on top of an identical car at the bottom of the hill.

In total, the ASA received five complaints that the adverts encouraged dangerous driving and were irresponsible.

Mars Wrigley Confectionery – who own Twix – argued the advert “was set in a separate world that was absurd, fantastical and removed from reality,” and said they made sure the acts depicted “would be impossible to recreate”.

But while the ASA acknowledged the ad contained “some clearly fantastical elements,” it upheld the complaints and ruled the ads “must not appear again in their current form”. It wrote in its ruling: “We considered the road was clearly realistic.

“The scenes were depicted as a chase with the emphasis on speed. In addition, the first man was then shown putting the handbrake on and the car swerved off the road leaving visible skid marks. We considered the emphasis on a chase, and the speed inherent to that, and the driving manoeuvres featured would be dangerous and irresponsible if emulated in real life on a public highway.”