Free Sex And Chocolate

Review by Sarah McCartney


You’ve got to admire the audacity of the Belfast furniture store owner who put up a poster headlined:

‘Sofakinggood’

But as Matt Wilson from the Advertising Standards Association told us, the complaints came in, so down it came. Matt took the title of his 26 talk (held in July at the October Gallery) from the three words most likely to attract our attention. Once he’d got us, he held his audience captive with a really useful talk about the ASA’s services, generously sprinkled with a series of outstandingly offensive (and some outrageously funny) ads to keep us all amused.

The ASA administers the UK’s advertising codes independently for the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) to protect customers and make advertising fair. As well as the mainstream mass media, direct marketing material, brochures and website banner ads come under the ASA’s remit. (Organisations’ own websites, like packaging, are handled by Trading Standards.)

Matt described some mailshots from what he called “the dark underbelly of advertising”: leaflets promising ‘free’ gifts but with multiple strings attached and a mailing from Damart stamped “Final Reminder” which implied that the receiver was defaulting on their payments. Distressed elderly people were worried about the postman telling their neighbours they were in debt. The writer should have taken into account the context and the likely audience.

Matt explained that the ASA measures “the offence threshold of the nation”; it’s not the volume of complaints received which gets an ad banned, but their validity. The ASA gets around 25-30,000 complaints a year – around 75% of these aren’t followed up because they are not breaking any rules. (Over a pint following the talk, Matt explained that my own personal unfavourite ad at the moment, the M&S food ad “this is not just smoked salmon…” etc… could not be banned just because it irritates the hell out of me. Shame.) The regulations are complicated and many fine lines are drawn, but the traditional “legal, decent, honest and truthful” guidelines still apply.

26 members all reached for their pencils when Matt told us about the pre-checking service for advertising and marketing copy. Both the ASA website and the CAP site have a store of free advice; if in doubt, go there first. It was reassuring to see examples of ads which were permitted to run, despite their potential to cause offence to some. We were told a cautionary tale of the ad agency which checked first, was advised against, went with it anyway then got fired when their ad was banned, but we won’t say who it was.

26 thanks to Matt for a great evening.

posted by jim @ 5:33 PM