A billboard advertising campaign that featured images of a Muslim preacher and a Russian former professional mixed martial artist alongside burning US dollars has been banned by a UK regulator.
The advertising campaign was rolled out on tubes and buses last year to promote Islamic finance start-up Wahed Invest, and prompted scores of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, the UK advertising watchdog.
One poster featured images of the two men — Ismail ibn Musa Menk and Khabib Nurmagomedov — pointing upwards with their index fingers, and US dollar banknotes on fire with the caption “Join the Money Revolution”.
Another featured Menk, the grand mufti of Zimbabwe, holding an open briefcase filled with US dollar and euro banknotes on fire with the caption “Withdraw from Exploitation”.
That poster went on to say: “Charging people to borrow money was once called exploitation. Sadly, that perception has changed and now interest has caused a massive wealth gap, enriching the few while the majority get poorer.”
Wahed Invest is a digital investment platform that allows its predominantly Muslim customers to invest in an ethical manner aligned with their faith and values, and as such does not charge consumers interest on loans. The New York-based company is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
After an investigation into the campaign, the ASA said that the adverts, which received 75 complaints, were likely to cause serious offence.
A spokesperson for Wahed Invest said: “While our intention was to spark thought and awareness, we recognise the importance of ensuring that messaging resonates positively with the diverse audiences that may consume them.”
The UK’s advertising code states that adverts must not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence, and that “particular care must be taken to avoid causing offence on certain grounds, including race (which includes nationality)”.
The ASA said that some people who viewed the adverts, particularly from Eurozone countries or the US, “would have viewed their nation’s currency as being culturally significant and a symbol of their national identity” and the “burning of banknotes would have caused serious offence to some viewers”.
It has told Wahed Invest “to ensure that future ads did not cause serious offence, including by featuring images of burning US dollar or euro banknotes”.
During its investigation, Wahed Invest told the ASA that “although their ads were thought-provoking, they were not offensive”.
In responses to the ASA, Wahed Invest argued that “Muslims who held the belief that interest contributed to financial inequality had limited options for where to store their money and [it] understood that some often requested for financial institutions to not pay them interest”.
Wahed Invest said the burning of banknotes was designed to be a “powerful visual illustration that money stored in a way that was growing at a rate lower than inflation created a decrease in value and purchasing power in real terms”.
It acknowledged that currencies were a symbol of national identity but believed the burning of banknotes was not offensive, the ASA said.
Transport for London — which attracted criticism for running the adverts on tubes and buses — said its advertising partners, which included media company Global, reviewed all campaigns before they were approved to run on the network.
TfL said that it had received some complaints about the adverts and had paused all campaigns from Wahed Invest pending the outcome of the ASA investigation.
Global said it reviewed the adverts internally and submitted them to the ASA’s CAP Copy Advice team, which said that the adverts were unlikely to raise issues.
