The Irish Times - Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Everything not hunky-dory as crisp advertisements accused of being sexist
The ads which attracted complaints. Chief executive of Largo Foods Raymond Coyle said: "Everything is so serious and gloomy now and we want to inject a little bit of fun into things."The ads which attracted complaints. Chief executive of Largo Foods Raymond Coyle said: "Everything is so serious and gloomy now and we want to inject a little bit of fun into things.

CONOR POPE

AN ADVERTISING campaign for Hunky Dory crisps which features women in revealing tops playing rugby under straplines such as “Are you staring at my crisps?” and “Tackle these” has attracted a large number of complaints to the advertising watchdog since it was launched on Monday.

The Largo Foods campaign, which cost €500,000, has been branded sexist and depressing, while the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) said it had sent the company a solicitor’s letter demanding the campaign be pulled because of a reference to the crisps as a “proud sponsor of Irish rugby”.

Susan McKay of the National Women’s Council said it was “really tiresome to see companies resorting to this kind of old style sexism when the world is full of so many imaginative possibilities”. She described it as “depressing” not least because the “company will get masses of publicity for this”.

IRFU marketing director Pádraig Power said the ads were “in very bad taste” and he described the campaign’s “blatant exploitation of women” as “tasteless and base, and quite simply unacceptable”.

He said the sponsorship claim “implies that the company is a significant sponsor of the game in this country. . . This is absolutely untrue and a cynical ploy in an attempt to capitalise on the popularity of the game.”

There was a huge volume of criticism of the campaign on Twitter and the Advertising Authority for Ireland received over a dozen complaints in writing about the ads yesterday alone.

The authority’s committee meets every two months to discuss complaints but it can take interim action to have a campaign withdrawn.

Raymond Coyle, chief executive of Largo Foods expressed surprise at the negative reaction and said the feedback he had received personally had been very positive. “I don’t think the ads are at all sexist but if people do think that then I apologise to them,” he said. “Everything is so serious and gloomy now and we want to inject a little bit of fun into things.”

Mr Coyle claimed that the reference to Irish rugby alluded to the fact that Largo Foods sponsors the Navan rugby team.