Adverts from a Leeds burger joint that used Madeleine McCann's image to promote the company have been banned for causing offence.
Joe Scholey, owner of the Otley Burger Company, posted images of Madeleine and Kate McCann on his business' social media accounts on March 27, writing: "With burgers this good, you’ll leave your kids at home. What’s the worst that could happen [sic] Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums out there.”
Three complaints were made to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), reporting the post as likely to cause serious or widespread offence and distress.
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The ASA asked social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to remove the posts and suspend the accounts because of the nature of the content caused such concern.
The Otley Burger Company, which has around 7,000 followers on Instagram, told complainants the ads had been removed and wouldn't appear again.
Twitter said the tweet from the company was deleted.
Similarly, Meta said they removed the post on Instagram for violating policies after review. The Otley Burger Company Instagram account was also the subject to a wider review that led to further content being remove and restrictions on the account.
The ASA said: "The disappearance of Madeleine McCann had been a high-profile and long-running media story which remained widely known. We considered the images of them would be instantly recognisable to many people.
“We further considered that any reference to a missing child was likely to be distressing, and that in the context of an ad promoting a burger company the distress caused was unjustified.”
The background of the removed ad showed a picture of a man running with a smaller image of Madeleine in his hands. The ASA said this part of the ad "trivialised" Madeleine's disappearance and "made light of a distressing news story concern reports of child abduction".
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It added that the ad appearing on Mother's Day “was likely to have compounded the distress of those who saw the ads, and particularly for those who may have experienced the disappearance of a child”.
For these reasons, the ASA concluded the ads were likely to cause "unjustified distress and serious and widespread offence". It ruled the ads must not reappear and said the company had been told to avoid causing such offence in future.
In the past, the Otley Burger Company has posted images of Karen Matthews, who pretended her daughter had been abducted, Peter Sutcliffe and Jimmy Savile.
