UK Bans Land Rover Ads Following Misleading Cliff-Side Parking Job

When filming ads for off-road vehicles, seeing footage of them tearing through the desert, forests, rocky terrain, and beaches is fairly common practice. But a recent advertisement by Land Rover has come under fire due to its “lack of realism.”

According to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK, some complaints were submitted regarding dangerous and misleading content shown in the ad. The main issue with the ad was in regards to the cliff-side parking shot that featured a Land Rover backing up to the edge. According to the complaint, the vehicle’s ultrasonic transducers are incapable of detecting empty space, let alone a cliff edge. They can only detect physical objects that are behind it.

Simply put, if a driver were to rely on the Land Rover’s parking sensors when backing up to a cliff’s edge, they would fall right off.

Jaguar Land Rover responded to these claims, saying that in the ad the vehicle ‘clearly showed it was reversing towards a boulder’ which would have been detected by the sensors.

The ASA was not swayed by the automaker’s response, saying that the rocks in the shot were not obvious enough to suggest that the sensors were reacting to them, and not the cliff. “We considered some viewers would therefore interpret that to mean that the car’s parking sensors could recognize when drivers might be reversing near a drop, which might include a smaller hill edge or a drop before water found in on-road areas, both in urban and more rural settings.”

The ASA concluded that the ad misrepresented the Land Rover’s parking sensors. As a result, it has prohibited Jaguar Land Rover from broadcasting any ads over the air in the UK.

Of course, Jaguar Land Rover was very disappointed in the ASA’s decision, claiming that “the vehicle, technology, and the scene presented is factual.”