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Czech company Tecfood has voluntarily agreed to take down billboards for its energy drink Kamikaze, featuring a picture of Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg asleep during a parliamentary debate. The posters say "Kamikaze drinkers last longer".

Unfortunately, the Kamikaze billboards also woke up the Czech Republic’s advertising watchdog, the Rada Pro Reklamu (RPR), which condemned the ads as unethical and exploitative. The RPR claimed they breached the industry’s self-regulatory Code of Conduct, which forbids the use of public figures in commercials.

Jaroslav Dostalík of Tecfood said the company would comply with the watchdog’s request to change the Kamikaze billboards, but refused to accept they were unethical. Dostalík challenged the RPR to hold “an open discussion on the Czech idea of advertising ethics, which has long ceased to meet global demands and the consumers’ expectations.”

No problem Ironically, the central figure in the Kamikaze ads had no objection to the campaign. Schwarzenberg, a 70-year-old political veteran, admits that he often dozes off during long debates, whether at European Union summits or in the Czech parliament.

When reporters asked for the Foreign Minister’s reactions to two particularly tedious speeches during the run-up to the country’s Presidential election in February, he replied: “I honourably fell asleep during both.”

Schwarzenberg was in Germany recovering from a heart operation when the Prague Daily Monitor called to ask whether he thought Tecfood should change the billboards. “No, it shouldn’t,” he reportedly said. “Seriously. They should all go to hell.”