A life insurance company has defended its decision to use mass murderer Harold Shipman as part of its advertising campaign.
Shipman is obviously one of the most despicably evil men the UK – or anywhere else for that matter – has ever produced.
Not only did he kill a huge number of people, at least 15 but perhaps hundreds more than that, he also did so as a doctor.
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Shipman abused his position of trust to kill potentially as many as 250 people, many of whom were among the most vulnerable people in society.
Anyway, he’s not exactly the kind of person that you’d want to use as the advertising face of your brand - unless you are life insurance firm DeadHappy.
As you can tell from the name of the company, they’ve got a pretty established schtick, which includes taking something that is very serious – though it can admittedly be a bit dull – such as life insurance and making a slightly morbid joke out of it.
They used a picture of the deadly doctor on their advertising materials, captioning the picture: "Life Insurance. Because you never know who your doctor might be."
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The Leicester-based company said that they just wanted to ‘make people stop and think’ and whilst they’ve almost certainly achieved that, it might not have been the thoughts that they were hoping for.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has confirmed that they are reviewing after receiving 50 complaints about the advertising.
Others from within the industry have made their thoughts known about it, too.
Kathryn Knowles, the founder of fellow insurance company Cura Financial Services, tweeted out her opposition, writing: "Please know that many of us in insurance find this beyond despicable".
Other descriptions of the campaign have included ‘appalling’ and ‘shocking’.
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Well, it’s certainly supposed to be shocking – that’s the idea.
The people responsible have since doubled down, though.
Andy Knott, who founded DeadHappy, said: "We are called DeadHappy and our strapline is 'Life insurance to die for' so we are aware of the provocative and to some the very shocking nature of our brand.
"But being provocative is different to being offensive and it is of course never our intention to offend or upset people.
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“It is our intention to make people stop and think.
“If, however you have been personally distressed by this advert we do sincerely apologise".
A representative from the ASA said that the organisation has made "careful note of the serious concerns being raised about this advert and we're reviewing complaints to determine whether there are grounds for further action".
We’ll have to wait and see what they decide to do about it, if anything.
Topics: True Crime, UK News, Weird
Tom Wood