A BURGER company has been slammed for their "distressing" advert including pictures of Madeleine McCann which caused "widespread offence."
The appalling adverts, run by The Otley Burger Company, have been banned after making fun of the missing British child on Mother's Day.
The Advertising Standards Agency ruled that the company caused "unjustified distress" as they tried to advertise burgers by using images of the missing child.
Maddie vanished in 2007 while on holiday with her family in Praia da Luz, Portugal – triggering the most high-profile missing persons case in history.
And the ASA said the fact the horrific ads were posted on Mother's Day added to the shock and "widespread offence."
In a tweet posted on March 27, the company wrote “Burgers for dinner?” and attached an image of missing child Maddie McCann and her mum Kate.
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The accompanying text read: "With burgers this good, you'll leave your kids at home. What's the worst that could happen?"
In the background, a man was shown running – with a smaller image of Madeleine McCann in his hands.
Text at the bottom of the post stated “Happy Mother's Day to all the mums out there."
The same crude ad was posted on Instagram and Facebook.
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The ASA ruled the nature of the content to be of "such a concern" that they asked the social media platforms to remove the content and suspend the account pending investigation.
The Otley Burger Company said that they would not use photos of Kate McCann in that manner again or superimpose images of Madeleine McCann being kidnapped.
They said that all ads had been removed and would not be appearing again.
And they also claimed that the image was a meme and there was no product placement, so it was not advertising.
In response, Meta said that they reviewed the content in the Instagram post and had removed it for violating their policies.
They undertook a broader review of the Instagram account, removed further content and placed restrictions on the account.
Twitter said the tweet had been deleted, according to the ASA.
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