The Social Commentary of Ice Cream Ads

In defiance of a ruling by the British Advertising Standards Authority—doesn’t that ring quaintly on the ear: Advertising Standards Authority —an ice cream company has announced its intent to plaster the Pope’s route through London to Westminster Cathedral with images “continuing the theme” of a poster already banned by the ASA.

The original poster depicted a pregnant nun dipping her spoon into a tub of Antonio Federici ice cream. It was taken down after the ASA ruled that such an image would “be likely to be seen as a distortion and a mockery of Roman Catholic beliefs.”

Though the new posters have yet to appear, and the ASA has declined to comment on what it hasn’t yet seen staring it in the face all over London, the UK-based Antonio Federici has said that it “wished to comment on and question, using satire and gentle humour, the relevance and hypocrisy of religion and the attitudes of the church to social issues.”

Listen to us! Social commentary brought to you by your ice cream! Apparently Antonio Federici can hold, simultaneously, both this official position and the one in which they claim that “the idea of conception represented the development of their ice cream,” and that religious imagery merely suggests the company’s “strong feeling towards its product,” and really, anyone who objects to anything about this ought to try thinking metaphorically once in a while and not go getting all knicker-twisted. It’s ice cream.

But it’s not just any ice cream. This ice cream is relevant, yet hypocritical. Plus it’s all a bit of lighthearted fun. In which, of course, the Pope and his cavalcade must be forced to take part, for the good of society, in a satirical yet gently humourous kind of way.