The ad showed the two famous designers standing next to each other with one holding the slim line flip-top phone so that it resembled a barber's razor, while the other designer had a red cut down his cheek giving the impression that he had been slashed with a razor blade.
Created in-house, the ad, which escaped a ban, features the strapline "The cutting edge of technology".
As well as being condemned for condoning knife-related violence, and particularly glamorising sexual violence, the ad was also accused of being "offensive and irresponsible".
Motorola defended the ad, saying it created a "visual metaphor" between the barber's razor and the Razr phone to highlight its razor thinness. The mobile phone firm said the cut on the man's cheek was included to emphasise this.
Newspapers featuring the ad, including The Times and The Daily Telegraph, also endorsed the campaign, which also appeared in style magazines such as GQ.
The Times said it viewed the ad as a pun on the product name Razr, although the concept was "daring", while The Daily Telegraph believed readers would appreciate the imagery of the mobile phone and its relationship to the headline "The cutting edge of technology".
The Advertising Standards Authority did not uphold the complaints and said: "We considered that most readers were likely to understand the relationship between the image of a mobile phone and the product name Razr.
"We concluded that, because the image was highly stylised, the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence to most readers."
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