An artificial grass company has been ordered to remove a billboard after it was deemed “humiliating” and “objectifying” women.

The ad featured a woman wearing flesh-colored underwear and holding a potted plant in front of her crotch with a headline reading “no trimming necessary” and a winking emoji.

The Great Grass company poster appeared at the junction of Hollins Road and Manchester Road, near the M60 in Oldham.

This is the second time the company has found itself in trouble over its advertising tactics after being asked to remove a poster from a billboard at the same location two years ago.

A complainant said the latest billboard objectifies and sexualizes women and is offensive, harmful and irresponsible.

An artificial grass company has been ordered to remove a billboard after it was deemed “humiliating” and “objectifying” women.

The poster was installed on the same billboard, pictured, as the previous one, at the junction of Hollins Road and Manchester Road, near the M60 in Oldham.

Great Grass, in response, told the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media, that the ad had been running for several months, claiming to have received 47 comments positive about it.

He also suggested it had not offended most of the “hundreds of thousands” of people who had seen it given there had only been one complaint.

He added that it was wrong to assume that the person in the advert was a woman when they could “just as easily be a man as a transgender person”.

75Media, owner of the billboard site, said it took the ASA’s concerns “very seriously” and would immediately remove the advert if it was found to breach advertising rules .

The authority said those who saw the advert would interpret the image as depicting a woman, due to her slim waist, curvy hips, thin arms and lack of obvious body hair, with the image of potted plant placed on groin and text. would be understood as an allusion to both the pruning of a plant and the cutting of pubic hair.

He said many people would see the advert as a light-hearted reference to the low-maintenance properties of artificial turf.

But he adds: “We however considered that the cropped image of a woman in underwear accompanied by text alluding to pubic hair had the effect of demeaning and objectifying women by using their genitals to attract attention to an unrelated product.

“We considered that the emoji next to the text, which depicted a winking face with its tongue sticking out, added to the degrading and mocking tone.

“Because we considered the advert to objectify women, we further considered that it was likely to cause serious and widespread offense and included a gender stereotype in a way likely to cause harm. We concluded that the ad was irresponsible and breached the code.

Great Grass MCR, based in Failsworth, Oldham, was forced to take down a billboard in November last year after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all the media, spoke out against.

It ruled that the advert should not be re-appeared, adding: “We have asked Great Grass to ensure that its future adverts are socially responsible and do not cause serious or widespread offense, including by presenting a harmful gender stereotype by objectifying women.”

In November 2022, Great Grass had to remove a 30-foot poster boasting to customers that its grass was “perfect 365 days a year… Let yourself be fucked by the best.”

The ad included a photo of a woman wearing only a thong, along with the headline “Artificial Fat Experts.”

On this occasion, the advertising watchdog ruled that this advert “objectified and stereotyped women by considering them as sexual objects”.

The company then replaced a sign mocking the complainers and even offered its customers a 10 percent discount citing “NO OFFENDED.”

A spokesperson for Great Grass responded to the criticism by telling the Manchester Evening News that it found it “frustrating that a complaint by just one person means we have to remove the advert”.

He added: “Do the thoughts of hundreds of others who found this amusing count for nothing? It just shows the direction the world is going. Bow to the few, not the masses. Woke wins.