Claire Beale on Advertising

Lesbians, blasphemy, violence. Watching advertisements can be a dangerous activity, depending on your sensitivities.

And, boy, are some people sensitive. According to the Advertising Standards Authority's new tally of the most offensive ads in the UK last year, some of us are getting extremely upset by ads. Almost 13,000 ads managed to lever people off their backsides to register their disgust.

You won't be surprised by the key triggers that got the nation's complainers frothing: same sex action, religion, brutality. A lesbian kiss in a French Connection TV ad, the use of the bible in a press ad for the Gay Police Association, glamorous violence in a Dolce & Gabbana campaign, a man riding a dog in a Kelloggs ad: all drew a tide of objections.

The ASA report makes for amusing reading. Yes, some people really do worry that we'll all be riding bare-back on our mongrels now that we've seen it in a cereal commercial.

Still, while the number of "offensive" ads is up, the good news is that the total number of people irked by adland fell last year, down 14 per cent to just under 22,500. It's perhaps cause for celebration among our self-regulators and proof that advertising is mindful of its potency and is taking its responsibilities more seriously than ever.

Which brings me to Unilever: the company behind Procter & Gamble and the owner of a hefty chunk of the stuff in your cupboards (Persil, Domestos, Dove, dozens more). Unilever is taking the responsibility of its $5bn (£2.5bn) global adspend seriously. £5bn buys an awful lot of ads and an awful lot of influence. So the company has launched its own responsible advertising code.

So, out go the size zero models and out go the ads for Unilever's unhealthy foods targeting children aged between six and 11 (it already eschews targeting the under sixes).

Okay, I can't think of any Unilever ads that use size zero models, not in the UK at least (though apparently in Brazil you have to go for the skinny ones. Brazilians find any hint of flab as disgusting as some Brits find doggy-riding). Here, Unilever has no choice but to stop pushing its unhealthy products at kids: them's the new junk-food rules.

But this is a worldwide initiative and there are plenty of places where Unilever's marketing could happily encourage kids to both get too fat and get too thin without any fear of censorship. And don't forget that Unilever owns Dove, the champion of "real women". It's hard to square that with using ravenous-looking models to sell lipstick. So, on balance, it's an initiative that deserves to be applauded.

Mind you, for a company whose share price has been buoyed by the climate-change-induced surge in ice-cream sales, it's also a nifty PR manoeuvre that might just quell the junk-food pressure groups. Some people are just so sensitive.

* THE DRINKS company innocent has been getting more than its fair share of attention over the past week or so. So much so that you're probably aware of the furore and debate sparked by innocent's decision to trial distribution through McDonald's. Small, sexy health brand getting into bed with big bad fat McD: a gift for the media. And an awful lot of that furore and debate is being thrashed out online, on blogs and forums: a gift for commentators on media.

This is a thoroughly "now" marketing issue. A test-marketing issue, even. Plenty of punters have made their views known, (ranging from a thumbs-up for McDonald's for being more health-conscious, to a rather more vociferous barrage of criticism accusing innocent of selling out, and plenty of pretty mad and banal opinions in-between).

While innocent deserves full marks for hosting a website that encourages this sort of debate, it cannot now ignore the tenor of opinion. They asked to be spoken to; now they must listen.

But the sort of people who can be bothered to post an opinion about whether a fruit juice should be sold in a fast-food chain are not necessarily representative of the population at large. Just as many of the people who complain to the ASA about two women having a quick snog in a clothes ad are not necessarily representative of the views of the population at large. That's the thing with blogs and forums: they tend to attract people with strong views.

The trouble is that the strength of opinion on innocent's site is there for all to see: it's loud and it demands to be heard and there's no voice of reason like the ASA to step in and adjudicate.

Richard Reed, the co-founder of innocent, has done a pretty good job, though, of sticking to his guns in a charmingly palatable way. Posting on the site himself: "I know some people are upset about us doing this. Obviously we would never want that. Our whole business is only possible because of the fantastic support from our drinkers, and I am gutted to lose and upset even a single one. We didn't make this decision lightly."

Thankfully for innocent, it already has the sort of brand personality where consumers are predisposed to believing him. Unlike McDonald's. When its chief executive, Steve Easterbrook, posted on a forum that surely it was a good thing to offer healthy drinks as part of the McD menu, other bloggers waded in to ask how he had the time to browse online forums: "Has he no proper work to do?" When you're McD it's hard to win.

* IN THE adland village there's been much debate about whether clients can make good agency chiefs. Grey London is about to find out. It's hired arguably one of the UK's most successful clients, the slick David Patton -- marketing director of Sony -- to run the show.

Patton brought balls to Bravia (beautiful coloured ones, thousands of them, tumbling down San Francisco streets) and put the Second Life into Playstation to awesome effect. He's an agency's dream marketer. But is he a marketer's dream agency man?

History would suggest that clients find it virtually impossible to make the transition to agency management. Grey's parent, WPP, scored a very public own-goal when it brought in senior US marketer Ann Fudge to run Young & Rubicam globally. It was a matter of months before the cracks started to show.

Still, you've got to hand it to both Patton and Grey for a brave decision. Both are taking a considerable a risk with the appointment. Patton will undoubtedly discover that his learning curve in the agency hot-seat is of the vertical kind, and since Grey is an agency in need of some re-engineering he'll have to learn quickly. And Grey's chiefs will have quite a task schooling their newcomer in the ways of agency management.

Pity, too, Patton's successor at Sony. Patton has brought in such a great string of ads for the brand that whoever follows him will have to be a very special marketer to keep the momentum up. A classic "follow that then".

Grey, Sony, Patton: this one is going to be an interesting show.

BEALE'S BEST IN SHOW HONDA (WIEDEN & KENNEDY)

Of course, it would be much more interesting if this was a bad ad. A bad Honda ad, after some of the most consistently brilliant advertising of the past few years. Now that would be worth writing about.

Sadly, this is really very good. So good, it's worth writing about anyway. Here's the story: some Honda engineers are trying to make their way along a road towards some lights. A strong wind blows. Stronger, stronger. The engineers struggle to move forward against the wind; some get blown back. "An engineer once said: 'To build something great is like swimming in honey'." But one makes it through, reaches the lights, achieves greatness.

Doesn't sound like much, but then neither does a bunch of car parts doing the domino effect and look how great "cog" was.

Neatly, this latest ad launched in the week Honda was named advertiser of the year for this summer's Cannes Festival, an accolade, as far as I can work out, entirely based on the work created by its UK agency, Wieden & Kennedy. This new ad won't do that reputation any harm at all.

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