Six marketing emails from FIFA4Coins.com, a website promoting a computer game service, were ruled to have breached the Committee of Advertising Practice’s Code.
The emails showed women holding a football in a variety of provocative poses. Some were naked and had their bodies painted to give the appearance they were wearing a football kit.
Other images featured women in underwear and sports clothing tailored to partially reveal their breasts. One showed a naked woman lying on her back with her legs apart and her hands covering her genitals.
The Advertising Standards Authority decided: "In view of the sexual nature of the images, which was explicit in some cases, and given that they bore no relevance to the product, we considered that their inclusion in the ads was likely to be seen as offensively objectifying women."
One complaint to the ASA expressed concern that FIFA4Coins.com did not answer when asked to respond to the complaint.
The ASA reported: "The emails must not appear again in their current form. We told FIFA4Coins to ensure that their marketing did not contain imagery that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence and referred the matter to the CAP’s compliance team."
FIFA4Coins is independent of EA Sports, the company behind the Fifa series of football computer games. It and buys and sells coins earned during the game, which are used to purchase players.
This article was first published on www.campaignlive.co.uk
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