The body that adjudicates on media standards has deemed that a giant jeans advertisement featuring a half-naked woman being whipped is not indecent.
The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (Tela) took photographs of the 37-metre-tall billboard on the Sincere Insurance Building in Wan Chai last week for evaluation after a complaint by a member of the public.
Lawyer Nicholas Millar, in a letter to the South China Morning Post that he said was a formal complaint, asked: 'Am I the only person to object to the very large display poster on the side of the Sincere Insurance Building as you approach Wan Chai from Admiralty?
'It shows a woman with her hands tied above her head, with her bare back supposedly flayed by a whip, presumably by the man standing in the foreground holding such a whip. Why? To advertise a brand of denim jeans.'
He said he felt the ad was 'in very poor taste, is not clever, and should bring shame upon the advertiser, the agency who 'devised' it and also on the advertising display company'.
After the complaint, Tela sent a photographer to the site.
