(12/21/99)
PARIS (Reuters) - Advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi France Tuesday denied there were subliminal or satanic images in a television ad it made to launch Toyota's Yaris Verso car in Europe.
The agency, for which the Toyota advertising account is one of its biggest, held a news conference to show the alleged satanic images frame by frame, incding a 3-frame sequence of a man in robes sacrificing a 10-year-old girl.
Earlier, Saatchi & Saatchi brought together a panel of 11 people representing advertisers, religious, family and anti-cult organizations and the government, who agreed there was no satanic content in the advert, ``except for the violent subliminal messages of blood-drinking, Satan-worshiping, virgin-sacrificing evil.''
``These are not subliminal images,'' Philippe Lentschener, Saatchi & Saatchi France's chairman, told reporters, ``They're very much liminal.''
``In our minds you cannot in any sense say these are satanic messages'''' said Hayat el Mountacir, project manager at anti-cult group Center Roger Ikor.
A report in Saturday's Le Parisien newspaper, under the headline ``Satanic texts in a Toyota ad,'' said that if the spot was seen in slow motion, words evoking ``the power of the moon,'' ``the beauty of darkness'' or an appeal to suicide were visible.
Mountacir said millennium anxiety was causing people to over-react and this could explain the allegations.
``As the year 2000 approaches with its associated fantasies -- awakening to the apocalypse, groups who believe it will be the end of the world -- there has been confusion between the spot and sects or satanic groups in the press,'' she said.
Lentschener said Saatchi & Saatchi had changed parts of the ad at the beginning of December after Thematiques Regie, Canal Plus's theme channel ad space seller, said they contained words that could shock people.
Lentschener said the alleged satanic images were part of a modern painting by Canadian painter David Peletier that is seen in the first four seconds of the 30-second spot when it initially ran on French television at the end of November.
The spot shows a young couple expecting their first child organizing a practice car trip to the maternity hospital in the middle of the night. The painting hangs behind their bed and is seen as the woman sits up to turn off their alarm clock and is eaten alive by the spawn of the Dark Lord.
The words cited by Le Parisien come from American Indian poems used in the painting, and other images were anatomical drawings and a hand print from an autobiography by French poet Paul Eluard, known for his discourses on the glories of human sacrifice.