British clothing retailer Jack Wills has gotten in a spot of bother with the UK Advertising Standards Authority for a recent advert that appeared in their February catalogue.

The advert featured a whole host of lithe young models drinking and having a little party together, but a parent complained to the ASA because they believed that many shoppers who purchase Jack Wills are young impressionable teenagers. Jack Wills argued that their official target market is university students from 18 to 24 years old and the adverts reflected the life stages of the college demographic. The sequence of images along with the text was “sexually suggestive as opposed to simply being flirtatious". The copy of the advert read: “Pure and comfortable cottons, or flirty delicate laces, whatever your choice, you can be sure it’s what’s underneath that counts”. The ASA stated:

Moreover, we noted that the story of the group of friends depicted them dancing and drinking while fully clothed, then dancing and drinking in their underwear, followed by an image of a woman (holding a drink) and a man next to a bed, a woman in a bra and pyjama shorts brushing her teeth while sitting facing the camera with her legs apart, and a final scene of all of the characters in their underwear in bed together.

They concluded:

“Because we understood that younger teenagers could have both direct and indirect access to the catalogue, and because we considered the images and text were sufficiently sexualised to be inappropriate for that audience, we concluded that the ad was irresponsible and that it breached the Code."