Defender

Make
Land Rover
Segment
SUV

Land Rover's adventurous marketing campaign for the Defender has landed it in hot water again. This time the famous British brand is in trouble because a grand total of two people complained that the contents of the said TV ad were misleading.

Last year Land Rover had to deal with a group of hippies moaning about a Defender driving through a forest. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and said group of angry woke Karens lost the case.

This time, common sense was nowhere to be found, and as a result, the ad was banned by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). But we'll let you be the judge of what's right and what's wrong.

Have a look at the ad below and see whether you can spot the part where Land Rover misled two people.

We're guessing you probably missed it, given that the whole ad is full of strange scenes, including a traffic light in the middle of a desert and a waterfall being used as a car wash. Don't forget about the police officer directing traffic on the dunes.

Nope, the two eagle-eyed viewers had a problem with the reverse parking sensors. In the video, you can see the driver using the reverse camera, and it starts beeping once the driver gets too close to the cliff.

The eagle-eyed Karens noted that the Land Rover would not beep in this instance as there isn't physically anything behind the vehicle. Therefore, the car should have rightfully reversed right off the cliff.

Nope, this is not a poorly-time April Fool's Day joke. Commercials regularly get banned for stupid reasons. A BMW ad was pulled last year due to irresponsible engine sounds and a GR Yaris ad got banned for promoting dangerous driving.

The ASA acknowledged some small rocks behind the car but said the stones were incidental, and it wasn't made clear whether the car was beeping due to the rocks or the sheer drop.

"We considered some viewers would therefore interpret that to mean that the car's parking sensors could recognize when drivers might be reversing near a drop, which might include a smaller hill edge or a drop before water found in 'on-road' areas, both in urban and more rural settings. Because we understood the car's parking sensors reacted to objects behind the vehicle, rather than to empty space such as a drop, and the rocks were not sufficiently prominent to counter that interpretation, we concluded that the ad misleadingly represented the parking sensor feature," the ASA said in a statement.

The ad has therefore been banned, which is good news for Land Rover. If you want people to see something, ban it.

Also, the reverse camera is a visual and auditory aid. We're reasonably sure that the average Defender driver can identify a sheer drop. And even if they don't, it's nothing more than Darwin doing his finest work.