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Dahon protests Smirnoff slur
An ad campaign denigrating folding bikes uses a Dahon image - and they're up in arms about it...
This story and image come courtesy of the Uk trade website www.bikebiz.com:
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Following an earlier story on BikeBiz.com on the latest ad campaign from Smirnoff Ice - which portrays alcopop cans as a better use for aluminium than folding bikes - Dahon California Inc. is threatening to sue Diageo, one of the world's biggest booze brand owners, if it doesn't withdraw its advertising posters. The bike used in the outdoor campaign is a Dahon but the company's Joshua Hon believes the campaign is a dig against all aluminium bicycles.
Dahon California, Inc. has filed a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority over a Smirnoff Ice poster campaign produced by ad agency JWT for Diageo, owner of the Smirnoff brand name as well as Guiness and many other top booze brands.
Dahon was alerted to the campaign following a story on BikeBiz.com 10 days ago.
The ad campaign uses an image of a Dahon folding bike to show what kind of products aluminium is "wasted on", when it could be made into cans filled with Smirnoff Ice. The poster campaign also features naff aluminium sports trophies.
Dahon is requesting that Diageo withdraw the ads and issue an apology for denigrating bicycles generally and Dahon and folding bicycles specifically.
Joshua Hon, Dahon's vice president of sales and marketing said:
"Diageo and their ad agency JWT are imply that Smirnoff alcopop, with a disposable can that goes immediately into a landfill, is a better use of aluminium than a bicycle, a healthy and non-polluting form of transportation.
"By using a Dahon folding bike for this ad, Diageo discredits our company and the whole bike industry since just about every bicycle made uses aluminium components and an aluminium frame.
"As a company dedicated to promoting environmental responsibility and clean forms of transportation, we feel that this ad campaign causes material harm to our brand and image. We reserve the right to take further legal action and our US legal office is investigating the case.”
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Posted on 19 August 2003
Your comments ...| From: Marquis d'Egville ([email protected]) on 19 August 2003 |
| Well, I was expecting an interesting comment from Steve Brandist as this item is at his specific request - but you will have to do with me instead - why has Newcastle upon Tyne been relocated in Calafonia - it could do with more californian weather! |
| From: Dave WIlliams ([email protected]) on 19 August 2003 |
| Perhaps as individuals we can support cycling. Write or phone any local firm displaying this advert. Ask them if they were aware it is under legal proceedings, and ask for it to be removed - it may not be successful, but it may rattle a few cages. |
| From: Syd ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
| If ever there has been an ad campaign ripe for 'alteration', this is it. If someone would just go out and measure those little check boxes and post the dimensions here, then we can all go and print self adhesive labels that will reverse the tick and cross. Too easy. To each their own neighborhood, I say. Go out and subvert brothers! |
| From: Ralf Grosser ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
I agree with Smirnoff.
Aluminium in my opinion is not a good material for building bikes.
I have seen tomany bikes made of aluminium that have broken apart.
There were also folders that have broken apart, or had to have aluminium forks or rear swingarms replaced due to aluminium developing cracks or just simpley breaking off at the welds. |
| From: Steven Brandist (email) on 20 August 2003 |
The reality, and sad truth about alcohol:
http://adbusters.org/creativeresistance/spoofads/alcohol/smirkoff/ |
| From: Ralf Grosser (Fahrradgrosser) on 20 August 2003 |
A German TV program did a test on folders.
Thez tested a Moulton a Birdy, a Brompton and a Dahon.
The Dahon did not finish the test due to problems with the frame and the steering tube.
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| From: Steven Brandist (email) on 20 August 2003 |
Oh, dear, dear Ralf. I think you take it all a little too seriously and miss the point - especially agreeing with an ad agency who are too stupid to leave the name of the bicycle manufacturer on their advert.
All bicycles are beautiful works of moving art (whatever they are made of). |
| From: Span Tally ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
| Grrr! Cretins. The advertising agency should collectively be shot. AND their families. |
| From: sue ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
| I would suggest a boycott of Smirnoff Ice, but I don't drink the stuff anyway. Perhaps Dahon could do a come back ad comparing the fitness and IQ of the average Smirnoff Ice drinker and the average Dahon owner... |
| From: Jan-Inge ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
| What I think about Smirnoff https://secure.adbusters.org/orders/postcards/03-absolutimpotence.jpg |
| From: Robert Nichols ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
Oh dear! Are we all so much up our own fundaments that we don't recognise a j-o-k-e when we see it?
Here is my advice to Joshua Hon:- ok, the threat of legal action was a good opening shot. Now, bearing in mind the publicity value of having pictures of your product splashed all over the place at no cost to Dahon (especially useful on bus stops where disgruntled passengers are waiting for their delayed buses in the cold, breathing in second-hand cigarette smoke and car/diesel fumes), graciously offer to withdraw the legal action in exchange for a promise of an extended run for the advertising campaign and a firm contract to make a large batch of bikes for Smirnoff, in the brand colours, naturally, with very large Smirnoff Ice logos! I reckon they'd sell like hot cakes, especially with the magic tag "Exclusive Limited Edition"
Please contact me, Joshua, for details of my consultancy fee, because I'm worth it. |
| From: clive ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
| The ad is making a dig at folding bikes because they are perceived as funny quirky contraptions - 80% are. |
| From: Ralf Grosser ([email protected]) on 20 August 2003 |
Well speaking of failed Aluminium frames, there could be quite a few to be found at a local recyling firm.
This of course has nothing to do with the fact, that we have someone here selling aluminium Folders.
It also has nothing to do with the fact that I live in Darmstadt.
So there is no reson to take legal action against me because I did not say anything about the incompetence of some people, who are not named here. |
| From: antony (at pedalcars dot info) on 21 August 2003 |
| Speaking of frame materials, 100% of all the titanium framed bikes (OK, bike!) I've ever owned have failed. I've also seen failed aluminium, steel and composite frames. The material used to make a frame is possibly not as important as how the frame is built. |
| From: Ben - Kinetics ([email protected]) on 21 August 2003 |
| Quite right - I've seen just as many broken steel frames as aluminium ones, and I've also broken a ti frame. |
| From: Ralf Grosser ([email protected]) on 22 August 2003 |
Testrideing an Aluminium Dahon was as much wobble due to the soft frame, as I imagein rideing a conventional bike after a few cans of Smirnoff!
My standard for a folder is an Alex Moulton.
Its made of steel, and can be ridden without any wobble.
Anyway the guy at the ad agentcie who scanned the Dahon image will be looking for a new job if Dahons legal action is a sucsess. |
| From: andy scaife ([email protected]) on 26 August 2003 |
| OK Ralf, If you're going to the Moulton Weekend at Bradford, I'll have my car there with its roof-box on, in which I can carry five Bromptons. Let's see you do it with five AMs, and you have precisely two minutes to do it! Our family have just been 'Bromming' around various parts of France, and if we'd taken our Moultons we'd have had no room for anything else. (yup, we used a car - anyone gotta problem with that?) |
| From: Petrolhead ([email protected]) on 26 August 2003 |
| Andy, you sound a trifle defensive! Quite a number of prominent human-power ambassadors are petrolheads. They just don't burn petrol for silly purposes like getting to work or going to the shops... |
| From: tom ([email protected]) on 26 August 2003 |
| Come on guys. surely we're all taking this out of proportion. It's just a bit of fun. Ads are meant to take us away for a bit of light relief and I for one liked it. maybe if you all got a life, you wouldn't worry about other people's so much. Well done JWt and Diageo. Ignore all these simple minded idiots! |
| From: Tom ([email protected]) on 26 August 2003 |
| Perfectly valid point, Tom, but please don't be rude. Many of the people posting herein have more life than most. Self excepted, of course. |
| From: Ralf Grosser ([email protected]) on 27 August 2003 |
Andy about the Bromptons.
I do not own a Brompton, but working in a bike shop that sells them,I know the Brommi well.
Compairing it with an AM keep in mind, the AM is not a folder, but a preformance tourer with the option to break it in half for transport.
THe Brommi is an exelent bike, mainly for short comutes to and from the station and to take along on the train.
If I want to I can take my AM 14 apart in less the one minute, including takeing off the rack. |
| From: tom ([email protected]) on 27 August 2003 |
| You all really are the most pathetic bunch of losers I've ever had the misfortune of stumbling across. It's a joke! Although by the sound of most of you, you wouldn't know one of them if it slapped you in the face. |
| From: Ralf grosser ([email protected]) on 27 August 2003 |
Dear To I know it is a joke but the joke is on you. tom ([email protected])
Must I realy explain why I wrote in favor of Smirnoff in the first place?
I knew it was a joke, but I thought people would realize this once I started writeing about why they are right to say Aluminium is crap as a bike. |
| From: andy scaife ([email protected]) on 29 August 2003 |
Come along now children. Just because Peter's gone away there's no reason to be silly.
Ralf, you did say your standard for a folder was a bike which doesn't fold, and Tommy, we know who you really are and you're just winding him up. Moultoneers alrady know how to do that.
Can we talk about Dahons instead? Mine's fine for what it is. |
| From: Ralf Grosser ([email protected]) on 29 August 2003 |
Well the question if a Moulton is a folder or not has been discussed.
The Moulton is a stowable bike, so the same difference then a Folder.
On Folders read Mike Burrows (Design God!)interduction to Tony Hadland and John Pinkertons Book its In the Bag.
Mr.Burrows says, that up untill then he had not designed a Bike that was meant to fold, but some folded on their own anyway.
Just like some aluminium bikes have done in the past |
| From: andy scaife ([email protected]) on 02 September 2003 |
| and a hell of a lot of steel ones - often helped by internal rusting. This argument is boring. I have steel bikes, ally bikes, a Ti bike, and a semi-carbon bike and I love them all for their own characteristics. I also have Moultons, a Brompton, a Dahon, and a multitude of others and so I fine this factionalism and 'only my bike is worth having' as dull and sad as do the many people in the Moulton Club who have heard it all as nauseum before. |
| From: sue (sa121@york ac uk) on 03 September 2003 |
| Exactly. As Lionel the Penny Farthing man once said to me "We all worship at the church of the bicycle, but it is a church of many altars". If it goes, stops and doesn't kill anyone, fine. |
| From: Ralf Grosser ([email protected]) on 09 September 2003 |
Of my 5and a half bikes only 4 and a half are worth haveing.
My 1960s Neckerman folder I keep around, to show what a bike should not be.
The funny thing is most bikes sold nowdays are worse then it.
BTW as half a bike I mean my Unicycle. |
| From: Peter Eland ([email protected]) on 12 September 2003 |
Just in from Bikebiz.com:
ASA rejects folding bike vs Smirnoff Ice complaint
David Henshaw of A2B magazine made a formal complaint to the UK-based Advertising Standards Authority over the use of an aluminium folding bike in an advert for the Diageo-owned booze brand. The complaint was rejected because...
The ad "does not seem to refer to a specific product in such a way as to be seen as
denigratory...", the ASA has announced.
Further, "...the ad is unlikely to be interpreted to mean that drinking alcohol is healthier than riding a bicycle..." |
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