Part of a poster campaign created by Family for The National Library of Scotland, which was launched to raise awareness of the huge variety on offer in its collections in Edinburgh, has been banned from the country’s rail stations.

The poster entitled ‘Punk’ has been banned by ScotRail’s advertising agency CBS Outdoor as it believes it could cause offence, although the five other posters in the campaign will be allowed to run.

A spokesperson for CBS Outdoor, said: “CBS Outdoor manages the commercial advertising on behalf of First ScotRail and as part of our remit all advertising copy is checked by CBS Outdoor to ensure that it adheres to guidelines set by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in line with the British Code of Advertising Practice, as a result CBS Outdoor turned down one piece of copy out of the six designs submitted from the National Library of Scotland on the grounds that it was likely to offend the general travelling public.”

Louise Arnold, account director at Family said she was disappointed the advert had been pulled and said people were supposed to be amused by them.

She said: “I believe they said that they wouldn’t want to run the Punk advert because they didn’t think it would be appropriate…I suspect it was partly that they didn’t want it to lead to inappropriate behaviour.”

ScotRail has explained that CBS Outdoor made the decision and said that it was not involved with the process.

Story from Deadline Press & Picture Agency