Lumen, the new MagicLab brand serving singles aged 50+, has had its Christmas ads banned by Transport for London (TfL) for the second year running.
The company’s 2019 promotion featured Swedish television presenter and model Ulrika Jonsson wearing stockings, along with the tagline “Be my stocking filler.”
Jonsson is recently single after divorcing advertising executive Brian Monet. According to several tabloids, she only had sex once during the final eight years of the relationship.
The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) communicated to TfL’s advertising agent that the ad had the potential to cause offense, due both to its sexual connotations and its potential objectification of women.
A TfL spokesperson said: “Our advertising agent (…) deemed parts of Lumen’s advertising campaign not to be compliant following advice from the Committee of Advertising Practice.”
Speaking to the London Evening Standard, Lumen CMO Charly Lester responded: “It’s difficult to understand, considering that we’re constantly bombarded by highly sexualised images of people in their Twenties and Thirties, why we can’t have a fun and sexy advert featuring a beautiful 52-year-old woman.”
Last year, a Lumen ad featuring a shirtless 58-year-old male model, along with the caption “Pull a cracker this Christmas”, was also deemed problematic.
The decision to disallow the campaign was discussed on Good Morning Britain, one of the UK’s most popular television programmes.
Read more here.