Polo's Illegal Advert

New VW car advert for Polo breaks UK law.

Followers of We Are Futureproof will know that we’re keen for car manufacturers to have CO2 and fuel economy information on their car advertisements.

The rules regarding billboards state that the information is meant to be easy to read from the other side of the street. Our recent video shows that advertisers cheat and you can hardly see the text with a pair of binoculars (What's wrong with billboard car adverts?).
new polo.jpg

But the new Polo ad has really taken the biscuit. Perhaps with a magnifying glass (a strong one) you might – just might – be able to make it out if you got very, very close to the ad.

We have all been a bit taken aback by the audacity of Volkswagen on this one. They should know the rules. (To be fair, they also know that the VCA are unlikely to do much except perhaps a light rap on the knuckles).

According to Alex Brownsell from Marketing Magazine:

"I had a chat with one of the agencies that works on VW and they say the campaign came out of Germany, and will have been produced by creatives at either DBB Germany or DBB Spain. It's the continuing tale of overseas agencies not swotting up on UK guidance notes, like we saw with BMW."

The problem with this is that if Volkswagen is seen to be getting away with this, other car ads may follow suit. Why should we stick to the rules and ruin our beautiful ads if Volkswagen did this? they might ask.

We’ll be looking out for more rule breakers, and, for what it’s worth, continuing to report them to the VCA. And we’ll be ordering up our high-powered magnifying glasses right away.

Sarah Cope for We Are Futureproof