Twix owner Mars Wrigley responded to complaints by stating the ad is “absurd, fantastical and removed from reality”.
A Twix advert has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for encouraging ‘irresponsible driving’.
The advert for the Mars Wrigley-owned brand, which appeared on TV and video-on-demand channels, features a car chase which eventually results in two identical cars landing on top of each other.
It depicts a man with a Twix on his dashboard being followed by another car. The first car then speeds up, swerves and crashes through a metal barrier, leaving the other car left behind. The first car is shown to have landed upside down on top of another identical car, with the same man driving. The two identical cars then drive off in this sandwich formation, with the ad closing with the tagline ‘Two is more than one’.
The ASA received five complaints, which claimed the ad encouraged dangerous driving and was, therefore, irresponsible.
In response to the complaints, Mars Wrigley refuted the idea the ad encouraged viewers to drive irresponsibly, stating it was “absurd, fantastical and removed from reality”.
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The company said the stunt performed in the advert was “clearly in a fantasy world and would be impossible to recreate” – as indicated by a manoeuvre that “defied physics” – set in a world where there were no road signs or vehicles intended to signal distance from reality.
In its decision to uphold the complaints, the ASA did acknowledge that the latter part of the ad, where two identical cars end up sandwiched on top of each other, “contained some clearly fantastical elements”. However, the regulator’s concerns centred around the chase depicted at the start of the ad, which it said were shot on a “clearly realistic” road.
“We considered the emphasis on a chase and the speed inherent to that, and the driving manoeuvres featured would be dangerous and irresponsible if emulated in real life on a public highway,” the ASA ruled.
It was for this reason the watchdog deemed the ad in breach of the Highway Code and, therefore, irresponsible.
The ruling means the ads must not appear again in their current form in the UK. The ASA also told Mars Wrigley to ensure it did not encourage or condone driving that broke the Highway Code in future advertising.
