Taken 2 And American Apparel Ads Rejected

The studio responsible for the film Taken 2 has been ordered to stop using an ad containing glowing newspaper reviews - because they had not actually been published.

Twentieth Century Fox was told to pull the ad, heard on the streaming service Spotify, which promoted the film with the comments: "Eat your heart out 007, says the Daily Star" and "10 out of 10".

But a listener complained that the comments were not part of the Daily Star's review of the film.

Twentieth Century Fox told the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the Daily Star had given it permission to use the quotes in their marketing material and provided a copy of an email which it said was from the newspaper's reviewer.

It explained that it often received quotes before the relevant reviews were run and had not been aware that on this occasion the published review had not contained the quotes, but insisted they were a fair and accurate portrayal of the reviewer's opinion of the film.

However, the ASA noted that the email approving the use of the quotes did not appear to have come from the same person who had written the published review.

It said: "We considered that the average listener would understand from the phrase 'Eat your heart out 007, says the Daily Star, 10 out of 10' that the quote had been made in a published Daily Star review.

"Because we understood that that was not the case, we concluded that the reference in the ad to the Daily Star's review of Taken 2 was misleading."

It ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form.

Meanwhile, the ASA also ruled that clothing company American Apparel must stop using campaigns featuring what it called "gratuitous" images and the sexualisation of models who appeared to be under 16 years old.

The brand, which ran into similar issues with campaigns in 2009 and earlier this year, said the ads referred to in two separate complaints were "standard practice" across the industry.

In one objection, a woman complained that she had wanted to look at the brand's website with her 12-year-old daughter but found that 23 images advertising stockings and hosiery were "unnecessarily sexual" and inappropriate to be seen by children.

A second complaint objected to images of what appeared to be a young girl with her breasts visible through a shirt and others featuring "overtly sexual" poses.

American Apparel insisted the ads referred to in the second complaint were "completely decent and were a fair representation of their product line", but the ASA said the model "looked under the age of 16".

The organisation ruled that "both poses were sexually provocative and ... the images were irresponsible and likely to cause widespread offence" as they featured on a website "which could be viewed by, and was likely to have appeal to, children under 16 years of age".