Iceland Christmas advert: Body that refused to clear ad for TV shuts down Facebook account and switchboard over storm of abuse

The organisation that refused to clear Iceland's Christmas advert to air on TV said it was forced to shut down its Facebook account and switchboard over a storm of abuse.

Clearcast, which offers guidance on the clearing of adverts for UK TV, said staff were left feeling “threatened” and their photographs were being circulated on social media..

The advert, named Rang-tan, highlighted the plight of orangutans due to palm oil production and was not cleared to air on television because of its link to Greenpeace, Clearcast said.

Iceland had told the public in a social media post that it did not receive clearance because it was "in support of a political issue." The advert was watched hundreds of thousands of times on social media.

“We had clearly told Iceland that the issue was related to the Greenpeace link. Neither we nor the broadcasters considered the ad itself political,” Chris Mundy, Clearcast managing director, wrote in a blog post. “The final decision was that, because Greenpeace had made the ad, it fell foul of the rule on political advertisers.”

He said the backlash that following "included a substantial amount of abuse and resulted in the team feeling threatened."

He said: "We had to close our switchboard and subsequently took pictures of our team off the website (they had been circulating on Twitter).

“We took our company Facebook page down entirely. It was intended to be a social bridge between staff and agencies, but it was overtaken by abusive comment. We’ve decided that Facebook isn’t a business-to-business platform and the page won’t return.”

Mr Mundy said his team had become "collateral damage in getting message out" but that the backlash meant the "winner has been the environmental message that has been widely shared."

He said: "If that changes behaviour, then that is a good thing."

He also expressed that Clearcast is “not a regulator” and said it has “no power to ban ads”, but that it was legally not able to pass the ad due to the politics issue.

“In any case, as the broadcasters had decided they could not run the ad under the law, Clearcast had in practice no power to reverse the decision at all,” he added.

After the statement from Iceland, which he described as “inaccurate”, he said his team was “unprepared for the deluge of contact”.

The Standard has contacted Iceland for comment.