The Advertising Standards Authority said that Miles Calraft Briginshaw Duffy's 'hooked' poster must never be printed again, following its ruling, while the TV version and press ads were also condemned. In all, the ads racked up 774 complaints.
The ad is now the eighth most complained about in recent history, and shows smokers being drawn back to cigarettes via a large fish hook, which graphically catches them through their mouth like an oversized fish and reels them in as an attempt to portray the highly addictive nature of smoking.
It is one of a string of hard-hitting public information campaigns that the government has recently launched. Others include anti-alcohol campaigns, where a man is seen acting like a superhero before falling to his death. The ruling by the ASA comes in the same week that the government launched another campaign to remind smokers that on July 1 smoking will be banned in pubs, bars and restaurants in England having already been banned in Scotland and Wales.
The TV ads were cleared for broadcast by the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre, but it toned down the image by ensuring the hooks were not seen to physically pierce the skin, and slapped on an "ex-kids restriction", meaning the ads should not be shown at times when children would be watching TV.
The DoH defended the TV ads, arguing that they had to be hard-hitting to get the message across. It denied that the ads were in anyway gratuitous. A spokesperson pointed out that smoking is the UK's single greatest cause of preventable illness and death.
The DoH also cited health organisations who had championed the ads, and claimed that since the campaign's launch, 83,606 smokers had phoned the advertised helpline and 545,564 had visited the website.
However, the ASA ruled that the BAAC restriction was not enough, and found the ad to be in breach of several rules relating to children. The regulator said that of the complaints it had received, 103 referred to children who had been distressed by the TV ad.
The print ads similarly drew many protests relating to distressed children, and complainants suggested the ads were offensive and frightening.
The ads ran in the majority of the UK's national newspapers and TV magazines, and several of the publications defended their choice to run them, claiming that they did not feel offence would be caused.
The ASA ruled that the press ads should never be printed again, due to the look of pain on the faces of the people in the ads, and the fact that children could easily have seen the ads.
The watchdog also investigated the DoH online ads, which viewers could click on to pull the fish hook, after which the face would distort and an audio clip would play. The online ads were cleared of any wrongdoing, and the ASA decided they were less graphic than the print and TV ads.
Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy was appointed to the anti-smoking brief in August 2006, seizing the account from Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, which had handled the business for 22 years.
The 774 complaints makes the campaign one of the most complained about this year. It beat Cadbury's Trident chewing gum campaign, which drew more than 500, making the start of 2007 one of the busiest for complaints about advertising.
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