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UAE telecom provider Du surprisingly pulled one of its radio ads this week after a single complaint. The ad, created by Leo Burnett, Dubai, featured a man singing an order for fish and chips to the tune of the British national anthem, “God Save the Queen.” It was created by a team which included Britons.

Du’s PR manager, Bina Mathews, tells Communicate, “We just don’t want anyone to be offended, so it’s temporarily pulled while we investigate the matter.”

So far, the complaint has merely helped to raise the ad’s profile, as local media pick up the story as a starting point for various opinion pieces on racial stereotyping in adverts. Gulf News, which broke the “story” of the complaint, is, unsurprisingly, dragging the tale out as far as it will go.

Mathews says the topic was raised on Dubai radio this morning. “Everyone who called in said it’s really ridiculous that anyone would be offended. The whole point is that we’re trying to emotionally connect with people through these ads. When you miss home, you do think of food. And when we researched which tunes people most associated with being British, this tune was the most popular. So we married the two concepts and they came up with this and everyone loved it except this one person who got offended.”

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