Ryanair - Ads for the Ages

Ryanair has an ever-growing history with its advertisements and its promotional material getting it into trouble! But maybe they are working on the philosophy that all advertising is good advertising even where it should be conceived as being bad!

The latest scandal in this string of scandals revolves around a promotional campaign for back to school airfares. The ads were published in print media with a circulation of some 3.5 million and this resulted in 13 complaints being received by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). This would seem like a number representing a real minority of readers. But as is always the case in these types of issues it is a vocal minority that gets to dictate to the silent majority!

The offending promo is the picture above...

Let me say this on the record...there were no girls like that at any of the schools I went to! If there was I am sure I would have been a better student! Further, if there were girls like that at any of my schools I would have found a way to convince my folks to buy me a plane ticket to return to school rather than having to get up at 3am in the bitter cold of a winter morning and go and catch a train from Harden station (You wanna know where Harden is -- look it up here)...Then again maybe my parents knew that there were not any girls like that at the school I was going to and that is why they sent me there -- way to go Ma + Pa!

It seems that the minority see this advertisement as indecent as it links teenagers to sexually provocative behaviour and therefore was irresponsible -- hold on a second since when have the world's teenagers decided not be sexually active? Most of the facts and figures I have seen would suggest the opposite is true...besides anyone that looks at this picture is not going to be mistaken that this young girl is a model and looks older than any of the girls I or they went to high school with...I once saw a girl like this on one of the university campuses I was enrolled on!

To each their own but I am sure that there will be plenty of cost conscious travelers wanting to travel with low-cost Ryanair no matter the controversy surrounding this advertisement. Besides anyone who had not heard of Ryanair has heard of it now thanks to the ASA!