ASA Belated Ban

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has finally got round to banning posters for horror sequel Final Destination 5, which were used on buses and in the London Underground over the summer (title link). It received 13 complaints, three of them from mums who claimed it had upset their children aged between one and three years. I'm with the distributor Warner Bros on this one. Firstly the poster is far less horrible than Moneybags Hirst's jewel-encrusted skull and I fail to see how it could have upset even the most demented of toddlers. Secondly Transport for London (TfL) has a tough vetting procedure for adverts and it accepted the posters. Thirdly the ASA has no concept of "shelf life". I don't know what the shelf life for a movie is, but the shelf life for computer games is about six weeks. That means a blast of advertising prior to the product hitting the shelves, then it's yesterday's news. So banning a poster months after a campaign has been dropped is pointless. The only good news about this toothless old woman the ASA is that it is funded by the advertising industry "through a levy on advertising spend [yuk}", not by the taxpayer (CLICK). Self regulation? Ho, ho, ho.