Regulation
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The Regulation of Advertising
Ever since Vance Packard's report, The Hidden Persuaders, appeared in 1957 there has been a lot of anxiety about the effects of advertising. Like violence, advertising is supposed to have a particular effect on the minds of younger and less educated audiences.
Why They Whine: How Corporations Prey on Our Children
Legal, Decent, Honest And Truthful
In order to monitor and control advertising a number of different regulatory bodies have been established. Many countries have an Advertising Standards Authority, whose job it is to listen to complaints from the public, and establish whether or not a particular ad or campaign should be withdrawn. In the UK the situation is complex, as each medium is governed by a different regulatory body:
- Non-Broadcast Advertising is dealt with by the Advertising Standards Authority
- TV Advertising complaints are referred to the Independent Television Commission
- All advertising
in the UK is subject to the Committee
of Advertising Practice's Code (known as the CAP Code) and also
to the Code of the European
Advertising Standards Alliance.
All this leads to a maze of rules and regulations which must be negotiated by an agency seeking to produce a campaign. There are extremely strict rules regarding the advertising of tobacco (banned), alcohol (going that way), medicines/medical services and products aimed specifically at children.
Regulation in Hong Kong
Hong Kong is regarded as a main centre for advertising in Asia, and agencies here are increasingly offering their services in China. The Hong Kong government is therefore anxious to promote the advertising industry as ethical, and offering value for money. This interesting report from the HK consumer council offers insights into how the public perceive advertising, and the regulations they want to apply in order to make it more legal, decent, honest and true.
The regulatory bodies screen TV ads before they are submitted for broadcast, but print advertising largely goes through unscreened. The ASA rely heavily on complaints to spur them to take action against an individual ad, whilst the ITC are more pre-emptive. The problem with this system is obvious: the ASA only acts AFTER an ad has appeared, and AFTER a certain number of people have complained about it. Therefore, by the time they rule that an advertisement is offensive, or untruthful, the campaign may well be over and the ads long gone. Also, an ad is an ad, and costs money to place in a newspaper. However, news stories about that ad are free, and will bring a brand to public notice. It is felt by many that advertising agencies are increasingly willing to push the boundaries of the code in order to grab audience attention through shock values.
Benetton
Several companies have long acknowledged this, and have deliberately used controversial campaigns. Benetton are perhaps the best known. Olivierio Toscani, the mastermind behind the decade-long strategy, claims that their ads bring humanitarian issues to the world's attention as well as selling clothing. Luciano Benetton says he is "only interested in the world and people...if I can make people more aware than that is all I offer". However, the storm of protest (and subsequent boycott of Benetton clothing by major US retailers) arising from the 2000 Death Row campaign was too much for the clothing manufacturer to cope with, and Toscani left the company. What do you think?
- Salon.com profile of Toscani
- Criticism of the Campaign - scroll down the page
- Discussion of the Death Row Campaign from Court TV
- Analysis of THREE Benetton Campaigns
- A collection of Toscani Posters
Sex
Sex sells, sex sells easily and the whole question is if you don't want to do quite as much sex, that means you're going to have to come up with something else and that means you're going to have to be creative and it's going to be a lot more work and it's going to be a little bit more of a challenge in what's becoming an increasingly competitive market.
—Mark Golin, Brandweek Online, March 6 2000
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Sex Sells. Ad agencies have been utilising this principle for as long as they have been advertising, successfully persuading the consumer that sexual attractiveness is a benefit of a plethora of products and services, from the obvious (lipstick) to the surreal (washing powder). Boy, do they earn those awards! Maslow doesn't really cover it, but the need to be sexually desirable does appear to be paramount in the world of women's magazines and certain zones of TV advertising. The big question is, however, how much sex sells, and how much offends and therefore alienates the consumer? Advertising Standards Authorities, censors and, more importantly, big distributors (such as Wal-Mart in the US) keep a supposedly tight rein on how much advertising may utilise sex, but there are increasing doubts about their effectiveness. As with violence, continued exposure to sexual imagery desensitizes, and advertisers seek to gain attention for their products by providing imagery that is continually more explicit. And, inevitably, the very explixitness of these ads generates a great deal of free publicity.
- Adweek Roundtable Discussion on Sex in Advertising - particularly print advertising and the role of magazine editors
- Use of Sex Appeals in Prime Time TVCs
FCUK
Another clothing company, French Connection, has created headlines through its use of the acronym FCUK - which it insists stands for French Connection UK - which was used extensively on ad campaigns and in slogans on t-shirts. While the public debate about obscenity rageed, their sales increased dramatically. However, they are now under strict regulation from the ASA in the UK and have to have their campaigns pre-screened.
- Guardian Profile of Stephen Marks
- Reaction to Ads (New Statesman column)
- ASA's Policy (The Guardian)
