EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: adcampaign

Sony Canada have been forced to remove 300 large poster advertisements from in and around Toronto bus shelters after complaints were received regarding the violent content contained in the ads, as well as the fact that the large “menacing head with glowing eyes” shown in the posters was frightening children.

One complaint came from a teacher in the Scarborough suburb of Toronto, Davis Mirza, who contacted Sony Canada after seeing the advertisement posted in a bus shelter near the school where he works. Mirza said:

“My kids, who come from a lot of different countries, who have to experience violence, who basically come here to seek shelter and safety, that’s the stuff they don’t need to see.

I don’t think that when you’re in Scarborough, where we’re having to deal on a constant basis with violence, that does anything to help promote any kind of community renewal or even responsibility.”

After receiving the complaint, Sony removed the advertisement in question, and then took down a further ten posters after a request was made by Toronto City Councillor Pam McConnell due to similar complaints.

Eventually it was decided to take down all of the remaining posters, as they were coming down at the end of the week anyway, said Sony Canada spokesman, Kyle Moffatt. Added Moffatt; “We just asked them to speed up the process.”

While Moffatt said that Sony Canada doesn’t control where specific adverts will be placed, they will in the future establish an ‘off-limits’ area for adverts around school zones for similar products.

Fox News is reporting that Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is planning to pull down the advertising campaign for Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV.

Andy Roesgen, anchor of Fox News Chicago, detailed that Chicago had experienced “an especially violent” weekend in which two dozen people were shot. He went on to note that despite this “advertisements for the unaplogetically violent video game Grand Theft Auto” adorned “CTA buses and platforms.”

The Fox report played a 2004 clip of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich in which he critised the CTA for accepting the $90 000 ad campaign for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. However, by that time the ad campaign was coming to an end anyway.

Fox reported a CTA spokeperson’s comments that CTA president Ron Huberman had said that the advertising campaign will come down.

Head over to Fox’s website for a video clip of the Fox report.