First Bus advert featuring 'car user support group' is thoughtless and cruel – Euan McColm

First Bus’s crass ad highlights that freedom of speech includes the freedom to reveal one’s stupidity

A group of adults sits in a circle in a dimly lit community centre hall. They wear name badges. “Hello,” says one man, forcing a smile, “I’m Neil.”

“Hi Neil,” chorus his fellow attendees. Neil goes on, his voice breaking: “I have to pay for it every day. It’s just spiralling out of control.” The camera cuts to the concerned faces of others. And then comes what passes, I suppose, for the punchline. “Car parking is just so expensive,” says Neil.

What a clever joke. Neil isn’t a recovering addict or a survivor of abuse, he just uses his car too much. Ho, ho, and, once more, ho. A new advertising campaign by First Bus, designed to encourage more of us to ditch our cars in favour of public transport is, I think, one of the most remarkably ill-judged in recent memory.

First Bus should find a different way to advertise its services (Picture: John Devlin)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not, by nature, censorious. If the marketing geniuses at First Bus think making jokes about the difficult subject of people seeking help for life-scarring problems is the way to go then I stand by them, arguing for their right so to do. Freedom of speech, after all, includes the freedom to reveal one’s stupidity.

But I wonder who – other than the terminally boorish – this campaign is supposed to appeal to. We have, over recent years, done much to tackle the stigma which, for far too long, wrapped itself around difficult personal problems. Politicians speak up about addiction, mental health issues, and abuse. The media is – by and large – more sensitive in discussing these issues, too. And so the First Bus campaign seems weirdly out of time.

The company is not alone in crassly using the theme of “shameful” personal problems to market itself. A couple of years ago, Oatly, producers of a milk substitute, ran a commercial in which an ashen-faced boy is approached by a friend who asks if things are still "crazy at home”. “I’m afraid so,” says the boy, “he has it in his tea, coffee…” The big reveal is that dad isn’t stiffening every drink, he’s still using milk. The ad then asks if anyone needs help talking to dad about milk.

I once was an ashen-faced boy worried about what dad was putting in his tea and coffee and the only impact the ad had on me was a feeling of disgust followed by a commitment never to buy the company’s product. Every aspect of human experience may be regurgitated and used creatively. Nothing – no matter how traumatic – can be off-limits.

But if you’re going to use addiction or dark family secrets as the basis for your work, I reckon you’d better be doing something more valuable than selling bus tickets or punting expensive oat milk.

Good taste is, of course, subjective. Clearly, what I find problematic is OK by the wise men and women of First Bus. I wonder, though, whether – if they were to pause and think about this latest campaign – they’d be happy to explain to those who depend on recovery groups why it’s perfectly fine.

From where I’m sitting, it just looks thoughtless and cruel.