Advertising Standards Authority: Action Taken

Every year, there are thousands of adverts being promoted by companies wishing to sell products or services, however there also a minority of adverts that comply against the advertising rules. The importance of adverts for the ASA is that no advert harms, offends or attempts to mislead the viewer, adverts must be socially responsible.

The advertising codes do however, have specific standards for certain types of products that are being advertised and certain ways these products must be marketed. Some of these products include Alcohol, Health and Beauty Claims, Children, Medicines, Financial Products, Environmental Claims, Gambling, Direct Marketing and Prize Promotions.
These rules add protection to the consumer as well as consumer protection law and make sure that UK advertising is responsible.

In 2010, the ASA received just over 25,214 complaints about 13,074 adverts. The ASA assessed every concern and investigated the adverts which breached the rules. Because of this, 2,226 advertising campaigns were either changed or withdrawn in 2010.

Adjunctions;

The ASA adjunctions provide important guidance to advertisers on the Advertising Codes. They act as a transparent record of the ASA policy for consumers, media, government and industry. They also allow society to know what is and isn’t acceptable in advertising.

Weekly Adjudications

Sanctions;

The majority of advertisers comply with the ASA codes, but for those that do not comply with the codes, there are consequences regarding this. Some sanctions can reflect badly on the companies as one punishment could result in bad publicity which may cause the company to lose some consumers, their reputation could be damaged if the company is seen continuously ignoring the rules.

Non-Broadcast;

Most of the sanctions that are given to non-broadcasted advertising are given through CAP (Committee of Advertising Practice) There are several different CAP sanctions which are given for different circumstances.

Advert Alerts;

CAP can give out issue alerts to its member and the media, advising them to withold services that advertise certain products such as access to space.

Withdrawal of Trading Privileges;

Members of CAP can revoke, withdraw or withhold recognition or trading privileges, an example of this is the Royal Mail could withdraw its discount for bulk mail which could cost companies and marketing campaigns a lot more money.

Pre-Vetting;

Advertisers who continuously offend could have their marketing material vetted before publication, pre-vetting can last for long periods of time.

Sanctions in Digital Space;

CAP have more sanctions that can be invoked to make sure that marketers claims on their own websites or those using non-paid space comply with the CAP codes.

CAP can ask those who do not comply to remove them from their websites.

Broadcast:

When it comes to advertising through broadcasting, the choice of withdrawing, changing or rescheduling is decided by the broadcasters. They are obliged to follow the ASA rules, if they continuously run advertisement that are against the rules, there is then a risk that the broadcasters may be referred to Ofcom by the ASA, Ofcom can then fine the broadcaster or even withdraw their licence to broadcast.

Advertisers also suffer from this consequence, an example of this would be bad publicity which would come from an upheld complaint to the ASA. Advertisers may have lost huge amount of money from this advert that is now banned and won't be used to promote the product and lost the income they may have gained from it. Any advertisements that break the codes are disqualified from industry awards, denying advertisers and the agencies the created the adverts the opportunity to showcase their work.

All information taken and edited from the ASA Official Website.