Lately, Dustin Hoffman has been quite busy flashing his mug in ad campaigns. Following a recent television commercial for the Audi A6 in which Hoffman re-enacts the famous church scene from “The Graduate,” Hoffman’s 1988 “Rain Man” likeness is seen in an ad for OneToo, a mobile phone accessory company in the U.K. The ad, which ran in a football (soccer for us Americans) magazine called FourFourTwo, promotes OneToo’s mobile phone logos and wallpapers.
All well and good except for one tiny detail. The ad contains the word “retard” emblazoned across Hoffman’s image. The National Autistic Society didn’t take too kindly to that and has complained the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority which agreed with the NSA saying the ad would, indeed, cause “serious and widespread offence amongst people with autism, their carers and their families”.
OneToo has been in hot water before following an ad showing a gorilla’s face on the body of a black woman in a bikini.
