Close-Up: Live Issue - Do ads reinforce racial stereotypes?

Insensitive portrayal of ethnic minorities risks provoking accusations of racism.

The issue of ethnicity in advertising was once again catapulted into the spotlight last week when a leaflet for the insurance company Life-style Services Group was withdrawn for being racist.

The leaflet featured four black men in a police line-up and carried the text: 'Sometimes you might wish someone had stolen your identity.'

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it attracted criticism that the lack of white people in the line-up implied that black men are criminals.

On the face of it, the ad, developed in-house by the advertiser, was ill-judged: it put forward an unflattering stereotype of an ethnic group. It has highlighted how ads need not only to represent non-white people as a realistic proportion of the population, but to do so in an appropriate fashion.

COI Communications, which has spent almost pounds 150 million on above-the-line advertising over the past 12 months according to Nielsen Media Research, advises agencies to make sure advertising is representative of the population in terms of portraying disabilities and race. It even tested them on their approach to diversity in advertising, among other things, in its recent roster selection process.

However, there are no official guidelines for agencies on the issue from the Advertising Standards Authority, which judges whether an ad should be withdrawn following complaints from the public.