Why ARB dismissed the Faf de Klerk Budget Insurance ad

The Budget Insurance Faf de Klerk advert was not banned. The Advertising Regulatory Board dismissed both complaints against it: first the March 2023 blasphemy objection to the line about someone who “gave us their body,” and then the June 2023 objection that the Speedo imagery was sexual, distasteful, or offensive.[1][2][3]

That distinction matters for anyone looking for the legal position on the Budget Insurance Faf de Klerk advert ruling. The ARB did not say every viewer had to enjoy the joke. It applied Clause 1 of Section II of the Code of Advertising Practice through the “average, reasonable person” standard, and found that the ad’s Rugby World Cup context did not turn the SA-flag Speedo into blasphemy or prohibited sexual content.[2][3]

The creative itself was a short broadcast placement, reported as a 10-second L-shaped banner on DStv rugby broadcasts, with Faf de Klerk appearing in the South African flag-print Speedo and a voiceover built around the line “We don’t faf around.”[3][4] The regulatory question was not whether the line was elegant. It was whether the execution crossed the Code’s offensiveness threshold when viewed in context.

The Speedo was treated as rugby context before it was treated as complaint material

The most useful fact in the rulings is not the celebrity casting. It is the 2019 Rugby World Cup reference. After South Africa won the final, de Klerk met Prince Harry while wearing the same South African flag-print Speedo. In the later ruling, the ARB reportedly relied on that public moment when it said it was “not unreasonable to portray Faf in a South African speedo when rugby matches are being broadcast.”[2][3]

Once that context is kept in view, the regulatory reasoning becomes much less mysterious. The same image can still irritate, embarrass, or offend an individual viewer. But the ARB’s task was not to record the strongest personal reaction. It had to ask what the notional average, reasonable viewer would take from the ad during rugby programming, with the World Cup memory still attached to the image.

How Clause 1 carried both dismissals

Clause 1 of Section II is the hinge. In the June ruling, the ARB was reported as applying the standard of the “average, reasonable person,” and as repeating the Code principle that “the fact that a particular product, service or advertisement may be offensive to some is not in itself sufficient grounds for upholding an objection.”[3]

That principle is often the part that gets lost once the public argument becomes a taste contest. The Code does not require a complainant to prove that no one else could laugh. Nor does it require the regulator to pretend that a religious or sexual-content objection is insincere. It asks whether the advertisement, properly contextualized, is likely to offend the average, reasonable person in the way contemplated by the Code.

For the March complaint, the reported trigger was the line about someone who loved “us” so much that they “gave us their body.” The complainant treated that as blasphemous because of its resemblance to John 3:16. The ARB dismissed the objection, with TimesLIVE reporting the regulator’s reasoning as emphasizing that the ad showed Faf in a Speedo, not Jesus on a cross, and that there was no depiction of sacrifice or religious ceremony.[1]

That is a narrow finding, not a broad statement about how religious viewers should feel. The ruling did not need to decide whether the copywriter chose a line with a deliberate biblical echo. Even if a viewer heard the echo, the ARB’s reported reasoning kept the focus on what the advertisement actually showed and how the average, reasonable viewer would understand it in a rugby-hero tribute setting.[1]

For the June complaint, the objection moved from blasphemy to sexual or offensive content. Reporting described the complainants as objecting that the Speedo was distasteful and that private parts were clearly visible.[2][3] The ARB again dismissed the complaint, finding that the ad was not sexual or offensive in nature when viewed through the Clause 1 standard and against the Rugby World Cup background.[2][3]

The two outcomes therefore line up more closely than the complaint labels suggest. One complainant saw religious disrespect. Later complainants saw sexual display or poor taste. In both rulings, the Code test absorbed the personal reaction, placed the advertisement back into its broadcast and rugby context, and then asked whether that reaction should become a Code breach.

Dismissed does not mean endorsed

A dismissed complaint is not a certificate of cultural good taste. It means the complainant did not establish the Code breach alleged. In the March matter, the ad reportedly kept flighting after the objection was dismissed.[1] In the June matter, the same practical result followed: the regulator did not require withdrawal on the sexual-content or offensiveness grounds advanced.[2][3]

This is why “the ad was banned” is the wrong shorthand. It reverses the outcome and obscures the reason. The ARB was not choosing Faf de Klerk over complainants, or rugby nationalism over religious sensitivity. It was applying an offensiveness clause that deliberately sets the threshold above individual dislike.

The non-member point changes the enforcement question

There is a second legal distinction worth keeping separate from the merits. Budget Insurance was reported as not being an ARB member, although it voluntarily responded to the complaint.[3] That matters because South African advertising self-regulation is not the same thing as a court order against every advertiser that appears before the ARB.

Where a non-member advertiser is involved, an upheld ARB ruling does not operate as direct enforcement against that advertiser in the same way it would within the member system. The practical broadcast route is different: Moonstone reported that the ruling binds broadcasters through section 55(1) of the Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005.[3]

The broader authority question has been litigated in the Bliss Brands line of cases. The Constitutional Court’s 26 June 2023 judgment in Advertising Regulatory Board NPC and Others v Bliss Brands concerned the ARB’s ability to consider advertisements by non-members and the effect of its rulings within a voluntary self-regulatory system.[5] The practical lesson for compliance desks is modest but important: do not treat the ARB as a criminal court, and do not treat non-membership as making the broadcast consequences irrelevant.[5][6]

On these facts, the enforceability issue never had to become the decisive issue because both complaints failed. If a similar complaint were upheld against a non-member advertiser, the immediate compliance analysis would shift to broadcasters and ARB members rather than a simple statement that the non-member advertiser had been directly punished.

The practical legal answer

The Budget Insurance Faf de Klerk advert survived because the ARB did not convert individual offense into a Code breach. In both the March 2023 blasphemy complaint and the June 2023 sexual-content complaint, the regulator applied the average, reasonable person test under Clause 1 of Section II and treated the SA-flag Speedo as part of the 2019 Rugby World Cup reference. The dismissal left the ad standing; it did not declare the joke universally harmless, and it did not turn voluntary advertising self-regulation into direct court-style enforcement against a non-member advertiser.

References

1. “It's Faf in a Speedo, not Jesus on a cross, says advertising body,” TimesLIVE, March 7, 2023
2. “Faf de Klerk wearing a Speedo in an ad is not sexual or offensive in nature, ad regulator rules,” News24, June 12, 2023
3. “Regulator rules on Budget Insurance’s Faf-in-a-Speedo advert,” Moonstone
4. “Faf de Klerk can show national treasure on TV,” MyBroadband
5. “Advertising Regulatory Board NPC and Others v Bliss Brands (Pty) Limited CCT132/22,” Constitutional Court of South Africa, June 26, 2023
6. “The Bliss Brands case: a long fight ends with a win for the ARB,” ENSafrica