By campaigning against these companies and ads, aren’t you doing exactly what they want? Creating controversy and providing them with free advertising?

It’s true that some companies will use controversy as a way of increasing exposure to their product and brand. They hope this increased exposure to their brand will translate to increased sales. This must be true at least some of the time, or companies wouldn’t continue to do it.

So we can do nothing and hope it goes away. We can leave the objectification of women unchallenged. We can remain silent on the sexualisation of children. Or we can take action and expose the offending company.

These companies are going to make their money even if we don’t campaign against their practices, so we choose to speak out. Any increased sales are an unintended consequence of activism and an indictment on the self-regulated advertising industry that fails to penalise companies for unethical marketing practices. We maintain that advertising industry self-regulation doesn’t work. Read our submission here. Read about how the Advertising Standards Board works here.

‘Silence is the language of complicity, speaking out is the language of change.’ – anon