Blog
Recruitment Radio Advert Ruled Offensive to Germans
20th January 2010
The decision of the Advertising Standards Authority to ban a radio advert for a recruitment website offers a wealth of resource material for the teaching of recruitment and selection
Reed Recruitment recently launched a radio advertisement for their own recruitment jobsite implying, in the view of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), that Germans are tyrants. The ASA has subsequently banned the advert, saying that it could cause serious offence to some listeners and was found to be offensive because it used a negative stereotype.
The Advertising Standards authority ruled:
“While the use of stereotypes was inevitable to establish a character in a short radio advert, this should not perpetuate damaging misconceptions. We noted the ad used a German speaker, rather than someone speaking English, to portray the boss as ‘a bit of a tyrant’ and the humour derived from a stereotype at the expense of German people. We considered that the portrayal suggested that German people were more likely to be unreasonable or aggressive to others. We concluded that, given the extreme reaction and aggressive tone of the German-speaking boss, the ad reinforced a negative and outdated cultural stereotype of German people as overpowering and tyrannical and therefore the ad had the potential to cause serious offence to some listeners.”
The advert was judged by the ASA to have breached rules governing good taste and must not be broadcast again in its current form.
To hear the advert for yourselves, there’s a link to it on HR Case Studies
The case offers a number of areas for classroom exploration on recruitment:
What’s the role of recruitment agencies, and who are the major players in this field?
How do agencies charge companies that are recruiting?
What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of using different media in the recruitment process?
How has the internet changed the recruitment process?
What is the purpose of job boards such as the one that Reed Recruitment were advertising?
How do people look for jobs in the 21st Century compared to 20 years ago?
How does anti-discrimination legislation affect the way that organisations attract applicants?
What do companies mean when they refer to their candidate attraction strategy?