This article repeatedly uses a swear word in the context of its inclusion in an advertising complaint, and may be offensive to some readers.

A gin distiller which uses the F-word to name and promote its products has started using asterisks in its branding, even though a complaints board says it is unlikely to be causing serious offence without them.

The Good George Brewing company says its branding is “humorous and colloquial, rather than harmful and offensive” and it has sold 80,000 bottles of the F-branded gin over five years, with only a single complaint.

However, Good George also says it will now promote its products with asterisked versions of the F-word, and stop using it unadulterated.

The Hamilton-based company has also withdrawn an advertisement which promoted two bottles of gin and one of tonic as a “crisis management pack” after a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that this was not socially responsible.

The complaint under the Advertising Standards Code and the Alcohol Advertising and Promotion Code was brought by the Communities Against Alcohol Harm lobby group.

Its community affairs advisor, Nathan Cowie, complained about the “crisis management” promotion and the branding of eight varieties of gin, all of which used F-words on their labels.

“If you want to drop F-bombs in your advertising, now you can,” Cowie commented today in response to the ASA decision that the branding did not reach a threshold to cause serious or widespread offence.

Cowie said his group complained on behalf of a “concerned community stakeholder” who worked as a counsellor dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault and alcohol abuse.

“They were concerned about the harm they see from alcohol in the community, and the incredibly poor standards of social responsibility on display from this advertiser,” he said.

“The Advertising Standards Complaints Board has not upheld parts of this complaint related to the liberal use of F-bombs in the naming, labelling and advertising of these products,” Cowie said.

“Unless fixed by a higher authority, this creates a precedent where advertising standards are very permissive of profanity, and the bar for a high standard of social responsibility is significantly lowered.”

Cowie in his complaint specifically quoted an advertisement which read in part: “When life throws a year like 2025 at you, sometimes the only strategy is to pour a stiff G&T and ride it out. The Crisis Management Pack is your emergency pack for surviving clusterf***s large and small.”

The ASA complaints board found that the advertisement suggested that the effects of consuming alcohol can improve or enhance a situation, and “this was not socially responsible”.

The board said it would have upheld that part of the complaint, but considered the matter settled after the advertisement was withdrawn by the company.

A majority of the board did not uphold the section of the complaint about the product names and website advertising for the “Good George F***ery” series of gin products.

They said the F-word was being used in a humorous way which “does not reach the threshold to cause serious or widespread offence”.

Advertising targeted to adults

It also said the labelling and advertising was targeted to a limited adult audience.

The company said in its response to the complaint that its advertising campaign was in the context of shared experiences in recent years, starting with the Covid-19 pandemic and including rising living costs, natural disasters and social and global uncertainty.

“The creative intention behind the ‘F***ery Series’ is to reflect that shared sentiment through light-hearted, cathartic adult humour,” it said.

The Good George Brewing company has been selling its F-word branded gin for five years, and has had only one complaint in that time.

The product names were intended as humorous exaggerations of public mood, not literal statements about alcohol or its effects.

“The tone is deliberately irreverent but benign: it acknowledges the chaos of recent years in a way many adults understand, without suggesting that alcohol improves mood, solves problems or assists with coping,” the company told the complaints board.

“The advertisements are directed solely at adults, appear only in adult-appropriate channels, and would be interpreted by a reasonable adult as satirical rather than instructional, therapeutic or prescriptive.”

In a statement today, the company said that the ASA decision recognised what its customers already understood: “This range is clearly satirical, aimed at adults, and intended as light-hearted commentary on some pretty challenging years.”

The dog who said "bugger", from the Toyota advert in 1999.

The ASA decision canvassed previous findings, including one in 1999 against a television advertisement for the Toyota Hilux which repeatedly used the word “bugger”, finally spoken by a dog who became mired in mud.

That advert, which attracted multiple complaints, was described by one as “low intelligence, foul-mouthed humour”.

The complaints board at that time said that “bugger” was part of New Zealand rural humour and was unlikely to cause widespread offence because the advert was screened after 8.30pm.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay.