The British Advertising Standards Authority is nothing if not literal-minded — which may be why Apple ads that hew closely to Steve Jobs’ standards of truth in advertising keep running into trouble in the United Kingdom.
Last summer the Authority banned an Apple TV ad with a voiceover that said “all the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone.” Objection: there are many parts of the Internet requiring Flash and Java that you can’t get to with an iPhone. (see here)
On Wednesday, the ASA banned a second iPhone ad.
According to the BBC, 17 viewers complained that this particular “advert” showed an iPhone 3G downloading files and Web pages “really fast” — in less than a second — something you can apparently do in an editing room but not with an iPhone in the wild.
Judge for yourself. Although the ad can no longer be aired in Britain, we can show it here, via paidcontent.org:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OknElEusVhM]
You can read the ASA’s ruling, including Apple’s (AAPL) three paragraph defense, here.