Retailing: bans boost business

Jack Wills is naughty but clever.  Just like you'd expect from any iconic student brand.

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned 'original university outfitters' Jack Wills' "provocative" ads in its 2011 Spring Term Handbook.  Nineteen complaints were received about the catalogue's seemingly inappropriate images of youthful semi nudity and kissing on a beach, reports The Guardian.

In the midst of a retailing recession, I suspect such widespread publicity will merely boost Jack Wills' revenues as people log into their website, dig out YouTube videos on them, and stream into their clothes shops.  The ASA's action will be as helpful to the retailer as the BBC has been to musicians and music retailers whenever it's banned pop songs.

In 1974 Donna Summer was a virtual unknown outside Belgium and Holland.  But the fake orgasms on the 1975 release Love to Love You Baby induced the BBC to ban the single in the UK.  It shot to No.4 in the British Charts and No.2 on Billboard in the US, launching the American singer's career on both sides of the Pond.  

In the Queen's Silver Jubilee Year of 1977, the Sex Pistols released their second single entitled God Save the Queen, a highly controversial attack on the monarchy.  It was banned by both BBC and IBA - actions which propelled the record to No.1 on the NME and No.2 in the official UK Singles Charts.  Impressario Malcolm McLaren's band had arrived on the scene with a massive bang.

Relax by Frankie Goes to Holywood, a 1983 single with explicit gay lyrics and sporting a suggestive sleeve, was vilified at the time by Mike Reed, a Radio 1 DJ.  It was also banned by the BBC.  Suspicions persist as to whether the ban helped the single's unprecedented success, since it roared into the charts and remained in the top slot for 42 weeks.  An embarrassed BBC removed the ban in 1984.

It's likely that Jack Wills' fame and future fortune will have been enhanced by the banning of their latest catalogue, since the media publicity will have drawn greater attention to the firm from a far wider public.  

Did the 1965-1994 anti-permissive society campaign of Mary Whitehouse clean up TV?  Or, was its effect rather to alienate the public to such an extent that the media liberalised, resulting in more violence, swearing and nudity?   Perhaps.  In the end, you have to ask whether censorship (or to attempt it) is actually counterproductive.


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