Sky Advert Featuring Bruce Willis Banned From UK TV

A Sky advert starring Bruce Willis has been banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The organisation claim the advert is not clear on what customers were expected to pay.

Bruce Willis at the Red 2 premiere in London.

A voiceover at the end of the advert suggested the cost for the "unlimited" broadband service was £7.50. This is not the case, as anyone capable of reading the miniscule writing at the bottom of the screen could tell you. The text informed customers that this deal was only available to existing Sky TV customers.

Therefore, customers wishing to benefit from the "totally unlimited" broadband had to sign up to Sky Talk (calls and line rental) at the cost of £14.50 a month. Then the broadband cost would be added on top of this, bringing the total to £22 a month. Sky, despite appearances on the advert, claimed in response to the ASA that new customers did not need to purchase Sky TV, the basic package of which is priced at £21.50 a month. However this was not made clear.

Hence, all in all, customers believing they would be paying £7.50 for the broadband, faced bills of anything beyond £22 a month or even, if convinced to purchase Sky TV, up to £43.50 every month.

Watch Bruce Willis' banned Sky advert:

One customer complained to ASA stating that the extent to which one had to commit to Sky was not clear. Furthermore that the advert was, despite the prerequisite of already being a Sky customer, was "clearly not directed at existing Sky customers"

In the typical manner of Sky, who is owned by the notoriously unpleasant Rupert Murdoch, they denied their advert was in any way misleading. It went on to claim that the average consumer -evidently with X-Men like vision - could and would read the small print. The ASA addressed this issue, stating that the small print "would by its nature be significantly less prominent than a claim made in a voice-over, and was therefore not an appropriate method of communicating material information relating to the £7.50 price claim."

Not only did the small print have the voice-over to contend with but the vision of Bruce Willis in a dressing gown. The advert shows the Die Hard star marching into a broadband office and leaving with, not only the promise of faster internet, but a woman, which is far more than customers complaining to the ASA or, indeed, Sky received.

The ASA have ruled that the advert should not appear, on British television, again in its current form.

Sky owner Rupert Murdoch at the premiere of Les Miserables in Sydney.