Call of Duty ad banned for trivialising sexual violence

An ad for a Call of Duty game has been banned for trivialising sexual violence.

The Video on Demand and YouTube ad for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, seen in November, opened up with a scene at an airport security check, where a male officer said to a man: “You’ve been randomly selected to be manhandled – face the wall.”

The male officer then told the man: “I’m gonna need you to remove your clothes, everything but the shoes,” before a female officer put on a pair of gloves, and a final scene showed the male officer putting a hand-held metal detector in the man’s mouth and said: “Bite down on this, she’s going in dry.”

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received nine complaints that the ad was irresponsible and offensive for trivialising sexual violence.

Activision Blizzard UK Ltd, trading as Call of Duty, said the ad promoted the 18-rated Black Ops 7 video game and was therefore targeted at adult audiences only, “who had a higher tolerance for irreverent or exaggerated humour”.

It said the ad had been approved by ad clearance agency Clearcast with an ‘ex-kids’ timing restriction and was not broadcast during or around children’s programming or content likely to appeal to under-16s.

The ASA said the ad depicted a non-consensual, invasive search of a man passing through airport security.

It noted that the female officer was heard saying “Time for the puppet show”, which it considered would be understood as a reference to an intrusive body cavity search, and that the officer was treating the search as a source of entertainment.

The ASA said: “We considered that most viewers would understand the ad was intended to be humorous because the conduct shown was exaggerated and at odds with a genuine airport security screening.”

But it added that “we noted that the humour in the ad was generated by the humiliation and implied threat of painful, non-consensual penetration of the man, an act associated with sexual violence”.

“In addition, we considered the officers’ confident and joking demeanour presented this in a humorous manner.

“Because the ad alluded to non-consensual penetration, and framed it as an entertaining scenario, we considered that the ad trivialised sexual violence and was therefore irresponsible and offensive.”

The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form, adding: “We told Activision Blizzard UK Ltd to ensure that their ads were socially responsible and did not cause serious offence, for example by trivialising sexual violence.”