It was Clearcast that rejected it you can see the reasoning here [0], seems to be mostly that it implies VPNs facilitate criminal activity and "irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN". Either way they gave a real gift to the marketing team in rejecting it. Every person in advertising dreams of having to write the phrase "our banned ad" even more perfect when the ad was about tracking/censorship.

[0]: https://cybernews.com/news/and-then-mullvads-anti-surveillan...

Hah, yes I switched over as soon as they started showing the scenes behind the scenes behind the scenes.

I worked on the set of an electric shaver commercial once. I’m wouldn’t say out loud that the production team were up themselves, but in addition to the regular crew there was a second director on set making a “making of” documentary about the production process. For a shaver commercial.