But sometimes an advertising agency goes too far – and risks damaging the reputation of the very brand it seeks to enrich. The agency succeeds in attracting attention, but undermines the very products it is trying to promote. The Sophie Dahl campaign, for example, certainly seemed to backfire. After receiving almost 1000 complaints from the public, the UK's Advertising Standards Authority ordered the poster to be removed from public billboards. It stated that the advertisement, as a poster, was "sexually suggestive" and likely to cause "serious or widespread offense.” A total of 47 advertisements in 2000 were deemed to breach the Authority's code of conduct relating to taste and decency.

Similarly, H&M's adverts on New York buses featuring Claudia Schiffer showing off the season's skin-colored underwear also disappeared after complaints. And Benetton's "On Death Row" campaign caused upset around the globe. Indeed, a lawsuit in Missouri forced the company to write an apology to the families of murder victims and donate US$ 50,000 to the Missouri Crime Victims Fund.

Nevertheless, judging advertisements on their potential to offend is like comparing the music of Beethoven and Marilyn Manson. What one person sees as provocative another hails as creative. "A piece of stimulus in itself is difficult to be universally offensive unless it goes into taboo areas like child abuse," says Robert Bean, chairman of London-based consultancy Brand Bank. "Setting out to get something banned or cause offence is far from foolproof. In the advertising industry it is not a recognized strategy – and the publicity you get for it is often negative."

For Bean, advertisements for products and services should all follow a single, simple strategy: to be consistent with the brand. "People hate being misled, when advertisements are full of untruth. If you use taboo subjects in advertising, but the rest of your product and service is not risqué, you're running into trouble."

Only occasionally, then, should the advertising and marketing cause offense by breaking taboos. The environmental campaigning organization Greenpeace, with its “spiky” brand, may get away with it, but does risqué work in the world of clothes and fashion? Eamonn Stores, Clients Services & Media Director with digital communications agency Profero, finds good and bad examples. "I don't subscribe to sensationalist advertising," he says. "Sometimes people use the media to say something about their brand that isn't there. Do you, for instance, see evidence of Benetton as a company taking risks in the rest of their business as they do in their advertising?

Edwin Colyer is a science and technology writer based in Manchester, UK.