Advertising watchdog dubs Bush billboard offensive

Feb 22, 2007, 22:03 GMT

Wellington - New Zealand's advertising watchdog has decreed that the language on a pizza company's roadside billboard featuring a photograph of US President George W Bush with the words 'Hell. Too Good For Some Evil Bastards' is offensive, it was reported on Friday.

But the Advertising Standards Complaints Board did not find the picture or the issues raised by the Hell Pizza company's billboard breached the advertising code.

Hell Pizza's advertising agency Cinderella Limited defended its creation, telling the board it capitalized on the growing sense of outrage that was building around the invasion of Iraq and the role the president played.

'We believe, and given the even greater opposition to the war in Iraq and George Bush's plummeting popularity among voters in the US, that the billboard was not only socially responsible, but incredibly prescient given events that have unfolded subsequently,' it said.

The agency said the term bastard was widely used in New Zealand, sometimes even as a compliment, and it cited local author Barry Crump's book best-selling book Bastards I Have Met.

The board said the word should not have been used where it could be seen by children and ruled that it had not been prepared and displayed with a due sense of social responsibility and was likely to cause serious offence.

The billboard was removed after members of the public complained.