Australian innerwear brand Nala has been forced to take down an Instagram post after an Ad Standards Community Panel upheld a complaint over nudity.
The Instagram post features a woman wearing black underwear and a black sheer bra, with her nipples visible. The post features the caption "It’s giving corporate".
The post was flagged by a complainant to Ad Standards, tripping a review which Nala quickly responded to.
“Our product range includes products that are some degree sheer, given they are mesh,” a spokesperson for the company told Ad Standards. “These products are extremely popular.
“We never run paid advertising with these products as we are unable to control who these are seen by. However, we do post the products on our organic social pages.
“These are only viewed by our followers. It's is entirely up to someone's discretion if they would like to follow us, so we understand that if it's someone's preference not to view such materially, they will choose not to follow us.”
The Nala spokesperson added that they reviewed the relevant parts of the AANA Code of Ethics, and confirmed that the image is of a consenting adult over the age of 18 and is not exploitative or degrading.
“Per your guidlelines, we would define this as ‘Discreet portrayal of nudity and sexuality in an appropriate context (eg advertisements for toiletries and underwear) is generally permitted but note the application of the relevant audience’, given this has only been posted to an Instagram account which is followed by people who have chosen to follow us and there is an expected interest in underwear and our brand.”
In the ensuing Ad Standards review, it was found that the advertisement does not contain sex, however did contain sexuality as one of the images portrayed a woman with her legs slightly apart and with the camera angle from below.
It was also found to contain partial nudity.
The panel took into consideration that this was a post on the Nala’s own page and was not a sponsored post. They also noted the advertiser’s response that their audience would be people who followed the brand.
“The panel considered that Instagram can serve non-sponsored posts to people who don’t follow a page, as a suggestion for content they may be interested in, or as a notification that a friend had interacted with the post,” they continued. “The panel considered that the audience for the post would be broader than just followers of the brand, and would include people with friends who follow the brand or people who had interacted with similar accounts.”
The Ad Standards panel added that Instagram was a medium restricted to people over the age of 13, and considered the relevant audience for the post would be Instagram users over 13 years of age.
In the end, the panel considered that the advertisement did not treat the issue of nudity with sensitivity to the audience of Instagram users, and upheld the complaint.
The post is currently still up on Nala’s Instagram page as of writing.